Bringing immersive technology into the heart of a school that's rewriting what education looks like

The LEX occupies the College Lounge on the OC's first floor - a location that puts it at the heart of the campus's shared life. It is a three‑walled immersive environment powered by nine projectors, capable of surrounding participants with content from floor to ceiling.

The space was designed to be flexible by default. Up to 15–20 people can be seated comfortably for collaborative sessions, with additional breakout areas around the perimeter. What fills those walls can shift entirely depending on who is in the room – navigable 3D architectural models, Google Street View, educational simulations, student-coded games, live‑event experiences, and more.

For students, that flexibility translates directly into learning. A science class has used the LEX to explore the solar system, with the movement of planets physically surrounding them rather than playing out on a whiteboard or screen. A coding class has run games they built themselves at room scale, seeing their work come alive in a way a monitor can't replicate. In both cases, the technology serves the same purpose: making difficult or abstract things tangible.

The same environment also serves professionals and the wider community, giving teams a shared space in which to review immersive content and make decisions together.

What the LEX delivers is scale.

As John Oberle, Reality Capture Specialist at Huckabee Architects, puts it: "In the past, you had normal presentations, PowerPoint presentations, you could walk them through BIM models. You can use VR glasses, but here you don't need VR glasses because it's around you. They can see their buildings come alive right in front of them. They can see scale. This adds scale. It's something that you can't do with a computer or TV or VR glasses."

For students at Forney ISD, that same principle applies. The LEX puts professional-grade technology directly into the learning experience, not as a reward or a novelty, but as a standard part of how the school works.

The reaction from visitors has been swift. School districts from across the United States, and as far as Australia, now travel to Forney to tour the OC, with many leaving determined to build something similar in their own communities. The facility has also been featured on NBC's TODAY Show, bringing national attention to the Forney model. The LEX is a core part of that story.

For professional teams, the implications are just as concrete. Huckabee Architects now uses the space as a regular part of its client engagement process, walking stakeholders through proposed buildings at scale, in a shared space, before a brick is laid. Unlike a screen, the room conveys true proportion, and unlike a headset, it does so for everyone at once.

For Forney ISD, the LEX will continue to evolve as a shared asset, supporting student learning, professional collaboration, and community events. As the OC attracts growing interest from districts looking to replicate the model, the space will play an increasing role in demonstrating what that model can be: education as something experienced, shared, and connected to the real world.

For Huckabee Architects, as the firm continues to expand its reach across the United States, the LEX represents a fundamental shift in how it collaborates with teams and engages with clients by bringing them into the process in a way that wasn't previously possible.