CHARLOTTE — Like many teens growing up in North Carolina, Ajith Varikuti has a special place in his heart for the Outer Banks. His family’s taken several summer trips out to the beaches and he’s seen firsthand the unique homes and businesses along the shore. When he saw on the news that home after home was washing away into the ocean, he wanted to do something.
His proposed solution earned him the top prize in the Autodesk, “Make it Resilient” contest and $10,000 in scholarship funds.
Varikuti started using a design software called Autodesk Tinkercad in middle school and in the years since, he’s experimented with other more professional-grade software in the Autodesk library, which is free to students like him.
“During the pandemic especially, I started getting really into it,” he said. “As I kept using them, I kept getting better and better at them to the point where I felt comfortable designing parts and buildings.”
To Varikuti, it was about figuring out ways to solve the problems of the future, and to him one of the biggest looming problems for builders is climate change.
The Cape Hatteras Seashore estimates beaches along the Outer Banks are losing about 12 feet of beach a year to erosion and sea level rise. It’s already led to 11 homes collapsing along the shoreline since 2020, including six just this year. The North Carolina DEQ expects the sea level will rise at least a foot along our coast by 2050.
If the shoreline is moving, Varikuti thought perhaps homes should as well. He came up with the idea of a 3D-Printed home, built to the latest FEMA resiliency standards and guidelines, that can be put together and taken apart in modules.
“I was thinking of something that would not just be able to withstand hurricanes in the next one year, two years, three years, five years. I wanted to create something that would be resilient for the next 30 years or longer,” he said. “I wanted something that could be moved and taken apart and disassembled and reassembled in different locations multiple times.”
Using Autodesk Revit, Varikuti put together his first draft and then sent his designs off to a professional architect with the construction firm AECOM, which uses the same software. He got feedback and made adjustments.
“He warned me that houses, especially in the Outer Banks, their foundations need to be much more deep, much more strong, and much heavier, so I added more resilient foundations as a result,” he said.
Autodesk’s Vice President of Education Experiences, Mary Hope McQuiston, said Varikuti’s proposal rose to the top of Make it Resilient contest because it showed just how much one student can do with this software and the potential to take these projects from theory into practice.
“I really love that he gave us visibility into his whole process,” she said. “He talked about the fact that he sought out help and mentorship with professionals and I think that was fantastic because I think for these students, it can be intimidating, and seeing him outline that process not only inspires him, but hopefully gives them the confidence that they too can do it.”
With his design finalized Varikuti said he’s started researching local 3D-printed home building firms to see what it would take to get a project like this built. He said he plans to use the funds to help him continue to pursue a career in engineering.
Ultimately, as our coastal population grows, he said he hopes home builders consider future options that move with the tides.
“Once these sorts of ideas gain traction in the community they start to populate in the industry,” he said.
VIDEO: How a new type of sand on the Outer Banks could help fight climate change
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