Science: Unlocking Potential

Dr Caroline Oprandi Keeping you up to date with science and technology at PACA

I have recently been to Studio Hardie and met with William (the guy with a hat, who was on George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces). As soon as you walk into the workshop, you feel that you are entering into a very special place.

These people are basically taking a tree and are turning it into something wondrous. It is a skill that I think should be widely revered and paid handsomely for but I’m not sure that this is always the case. When considering advances in science and technology I believe that we have to keep sight of these traditional crafts and not let them become insignificant. They need to co-exist side-by side with advances in technology. As well as having beautiful constructed items from wood, we also need to be thinking about designing the next generation of building materials.
This is something that the University Technical College@ Harbourside will be offering future generations. The UTC College will be housed in the Victorian Marine and Carpenters Workshop at Newhaven, built in 1882 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway Company. It has stood empty since 1980 and in 1993 became a listed building. For a great write up of the history of the building and UTC@harbourside see the recent article in VivaLewes (issue 105).

UTC@harbourside will open in September 2015 and will focus on marine and environmental engineering. University Technical Colleges offer 14 to 18 year olds the opportunity to learn highly regarded academic and technical subjects and become the inventors, engineers, scientists and technicians of tomorrow. Students learn these subjects in highly integrated ways, with an emphasis on project-based learning rather than traditional learning approaches. Students combine their academic studies with its practical applications and get hands-on to experiment, design, make, test and evaluate using specialised equipment.