Winning Junior Entry Pupils10 weeks ago Sensation Centre in Dundee invited Glenalmond College to participate in a 10 week project (Go4SET - Go for Science, Engineering and Technology) organised by the Engineering and Development Trust to design an environmentally friendly hotel.

We 'volunteered' our 2nd Form pupils to work with our mentor, Andy Milligan from the Department of Design at Dundee University, and this involved visits to the university to develop ideas and for Andy to visit Glenalmond to brainstorm the structure of our hotel. Their designs and working drawings which were made available at the competition as posters are available as a .pdf download here - Junior Engineers Eco Hotel posters (link).

Starting from the premise that 'no idea was too extreme' we moved from floating hotels to hotels made from recycled tin cans, but we eventually settled on a design which was partially submersible on the West coast of Scotland. The environmentally friendly features it contained were that it rotated with the sun to gain as much solar energy as possible, below sea level there were tidal generators and rain water would be collected by collection points encircling the hotel. The clientele we were hoping to attract would be naturalists, walkers and climbers and it was to be titled 'Oblo'.

The presentation and prize giving day was Tuesday 9th December and after some severe cross examining by the judges, Glenalmond won the most innovative design award and £250 which will be donated to charity.

I would like to thank Dr Colby for all of her hard work and commitment to to the project, Andy Milligan for helping us to 'think outside the box' and the pupils who worked so well throughout the past ten weeks.

Dr S N Kinge