Summary:
- Students at Lafayette High School won first place at the 2025 National Technology Student Association (TSA) Conference for their museum design.
- Teacher Taylor Steele worked with the non-profit ACE of the Bluegrass to develop Lafayette's ACE (Architecture, Construction, and Engineering) Pathway—one of the few pre-architecture programs in the US.
- After experimenting with other rendering tools, Mr Steele found Enscape was perfect for his students' needs thanks to its integration with Revit and usability.
- Enscape was key to the student's win. It was a vital teaching tool during the year, and the final renderings wowed judges.
Months on from the win, teacher Taylor Steele says the moment his Lafayette High School students won the Architectural Design Competition at the 2025 National Technology Student Association (TSA) Conference is “still surreal.” But for those familiar with Steele and the evolution of the pre-engineering program he co-leads, the 2025 win was a natural outcome of years of dedication, innovation, and student-centered learning.
Over time, Steele has developed the program, turning it into a pathway that lays down strong foundations for its student participants. The kids learn about architecture, construction, and engineering, from concepts to execution, including learning tools and software to fully flesh out their designs.
The recent prize-winning project was a culmination of a year-long project, in which students designed a museum. Wanting the teens to get their work as close to professional standards as possible, Steele found that Enscape was a key tool in helping them surpass previous efforts to take out the 2025 award.
Problem: balancing professional standards with student-friendly tools
Lafayette High School
From mentoring four students at an after-school program, Lafayette High’s Pre-Architecture ACE Pathway has grown into a robust four-year pathway. The program spans from Introduction to Architecture, ACE 1, 2, and 3, and a senior-year internship option, with over 200 students participating in ACE-specific classes.
The ACE classes are different from most high school classes with students being set year-long projects that see them move through all stages of design, from start to finish. This set up has also been perfect for the students to participate in the Architectural Design section of the Technology Student Association (TSA). For the 2025 competition, students needed to design a museum no taller than three storeys, that included at least nine galleries, staff spaces, and a place to eat. The rest was up to the students to design.
The 2025 award wasn’t the first time Lafayette High had entered the TSA competition. Previous entries had earned third and fourth place, so for 2025 , Steele and his students knew they needed something to elevate their work from impressive student projects to something that could be mistaken for professional-grade work.
While the students were quick learners, Steele found it difficult to find real-time visualization software that was both robust enough to showcase their designs in-depth, while also being intuitive and user friendly. And the school district even blocked one program outright due to its gaming engine. After trialling some options, Steele was at a loss until a student suggested they try Enscape.
Solution: Enscape—a professional tool with a gentle learning curve
Lafayette High School
As chance would have it, Steele had first heard about Enscape years earlier and was open to giving it a try. Once the school district approved its use, he quickly saw how well it fit into the classroom—working seamlessly with existing programs and proving simple for students to pick up.
“The thing that I love about it is how seamlessly it integrates into Revit,” Steele explains. “When I tell you that it is seamless, I'm not just saying it to say it. It’s a true integration into the student workflow. It's just easy. The kids can pick it up. I can give them a 25-minute tutorial over Enscape and they just run with it. It’s intuitive. That's been the biggest game changer for us.”
Steele has found that he’s able to use Enscape across students of all levels, including beginners, and sometimes the students even discover features he didn’t know existed. The flip side, he admits, is that the software can be a little too engaging—a testament to how immersive it is. “I'm like, ‘Y'all, your floor plan doesn't work! This building doesn't stand up—I don't care how pretty it is! Can we fix that first and get out of the rendering software?’” he laughs.
Lafayette High School
Beyond the competition, Enscape has become a vital teaching tool for helping students grasp fundamentals like scale, proportions, materiality, and space. By seeing lifelike representations—complete with people, lighting, and texture—the concepts click in a way textbooks can’t. As Steele puts it: "I use the V8 juice analogy: You're getting that whole serving of vegetables—the things you need to know—but you're doing it in a way that's palatable."
When it came to the TSA competition project, Steele explains that Enscape didn’t just help with renderings, it also helped the kids problem solve. “The design has a really intricate facade—I fondly nicknamed it the ruffles chip—the crinkled perforated facade wraps the building," he says. "They were able to utilize Enscape to see how the chip facade interacted with their triangular curtain wall. Creating juxtaposition between the opaque panels, the translucent panels, and the clear panels to make sure that the idea that they were trying to come across actually translated to the real world."
Results: student effort and professional-quality visuals lead to success
Lafayette High School
The combination of student dedication and Enscape’s professional-quality output gave Lafayette the edge it needed. The team compiled a massive packet (see sample pages here) including 20 pages of documentation and visuals, and delivered an eight-minute presentation to a panel of judges. Their work stood out decisively at the state level, before ultimately triumphing on the national stage.
The students’ commitment drove the project forward, with many hours spent outside of class time. But Steele is clear about what set their entry apart: “I will not mince words, Enscape is a huge piece to it. Having those realistic renderings and having the diagrams that we're able to produce with it—that levels them up.”
That advantage became even more pronounced just before the competition deadline. "Two days before our documentation packet was due—I think they had probably close to 30-35 renderings in that—an Enscape update came through that further improved the already awesome rendering engine. We re-rendered one of our images as a test, and it was fantastic. I told the kids, 'Well, you already know what we're about to do.' And the kids said, 'We know. We're going to re-render everything.' So they re-rendered their entire project, and swapped out all the images two days before the turn in. I can tell you that gave them an edge, big time. Big time. One of the things I love about Enscape is that they are continually improving the platform. As students are pulling together their college admissions portfolios, they are taking advantage of the new AI Enhancer tool. This has been an absolute game-changer for students' work, it truly is incredible."
Sustaining student motivation over the course of such an ambitious project can be challenging, but the payoff was undeniable. With their 2025 victory fresh in mind, Steele and his students are already preparing for the 2026 competition—and with Enscape firmly embedded in the curriculum, these budding architecture professionals are aiming to replicate their national success.
