Building careers, building community

This year’s Studio 804 house, located at 1718 Atherton Court, will feature steel siding and a south-facing wall of windows. Architecture and Urban Design Professor Dan Rockhill and about 20 undergraduate and graduate students have been working on the project all semester. Jean Dodd/Studio 804

By Jennifer Kepka

Dan Rockhill, professor of architecture and urban design, has a chalkboard in the middle of his Studio 804 classroom listing the tasks facing the class before the end of the semester. The “classroom” also has a bathtub, power saws and a trench that’s waiting for electrical cables to be dropped into it. In this architecture class, students may not have papers to finish, but by the end of the semester, they’ll have something even bigger to show for their work: a finished house.

This semester’s in-progress structure is at 1718 Atherton Court in East Lawrence. Class is in session six days a week starting at 7 a.m. and ending at sundown.

Rockhill and his students — nine graduate students and 10 undergraduates — meet every morning to make sure everyone knows what the day’s plans are, and then the work commences. A project here may be hanging drywall, polishing the recycled steel that will serve as the house’s siding or placing a skylight, a far cry from the years of drawings and drafting the students have had until now.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for three years,” says Diane Mansfield, a third-year graduate student in architecture. “It’s the pinnacle of education at KU.”

Rockhill agrees completely. The class is preceded by a spring seminar on predesign, funding and zoning issues taught by Kent Spreckelmeyer, professor of architecture admin- istration. The two classes together provide a chance for hands-on work that few architecture programs have offered in the past, he says.

“It’s one of the reasons we see so little good work around,” Rockhill says.

In the past few years, however, more architecture schools across the country have started to incorporate design-build programs in their curriculum, sometimes seeing KU as a model school.

“We’ve almost become the poster child for a really thorough and unique experience in synthesizing education in architecture,” Rockhill says.

In its 10th year and now on its fifth house, Studio 804 has become something of a local phenomenon, with student-designed, student-built houses now standing in several Lawrence neighborhoods.

The program is now nationally recognized as well, this year competing with five other universities for a $25,000 prize from the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards.

This year’s house is in the middle of a neighborhood of mostly modern homes. The Studio 804 house, though, promises to stand out not just in its method of construction but also in its innovative design. The house is a maze of naturally lit spaces that eventually will reduce the need for the occupants to use much energy in lighting the space, Mansfield says. Across the southern wall, 4-foot-tall tubes of water will line the interior to collect heat from the sun, reducing heating costs during the winter.

“We’ve really spent a lot of time working with the site,” Rockhill says.

The actual client for the site is Tenants to Homeowners, a Lawrence agency that helps develop and provide affordable housing for low-income families in the area. The class has worked for TTH for three years, and the results have been very positive, Rockhill says.

“They are really enthused and interested clients who are asking us to look at issues that professionals and contractors in the industry don’t really have time for,” Rockhill says.

In addition to the money provided through TTH, students in the group secure donations of materials from local companies to enable the use of more expensive, innovative products. The windows on the front of the house, for instance, once stood in a building owned by the Kansas City Star.

“Our students are really to be commended for their enthusiasm not only for the building but also for understanding the complexities of finances and suppliers and trying to get donations,” Rockhill says.

Less than a month remains at the site, and students soon will put all of their enthusiasm to the test to finish. All of the group’s graduate members will graduate in May, giving them a concrete deadline of May 17 for completion. Right now, neither Rockhill nor his students seem too concerned.

“It’s a constant process and a constant battle to get it done by graduation,” Mansfield says, looking at the chalkboard list of things left to complete. “We’re gonna break our backs to get it done by graduation, but things are getting crossed off.”