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It seems that hands on is the name of the game at the University of Texas at Austin. Just as UT is making news headlines with its film department's production company, the architecture department at the school is literally knee deep in its own production. UT's School of Architecture first design/build studio, called Design > Build > Texas, broke ground on a single-family house in the Texas Hill Country on May 15. Completely designed and constructed by eight undergraduates, eight graduate students, and two faculty members, the house will demonstrate environmentally sensitive site and building design, within an affordable context.
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"This house is a model for an extreme area," says Louise Harpman, associate dean for undergraduate programs at UT, and the initiator of the project. Faculty field director Russell Krepart concurs, "We're trying to balance buildability and sustainability. And the design is specific to the tough Texas climate."
The realization of Design > Build > Texas is a bit of a coup for Harpman. An eight-year veteran of Yale’s School of Architecture, where she was the studio director for the Yale Building Project, the country’s oldest design/build program, Harpman came to Austin in fall of 2003 with high hopes to accomplish what she could not at Yale. With a single donor offering access to the land plus $120,000, and around 15 building product donors stepping up to be involved, the program was a huge success. According to Harpman, it’s the first of its kind. "Most university design/build programs are building for a local not-for-profit, an agency, or a developer," she says. "For us, the demand of trying to "sell" the house has been lifted from us. This is a real academic, experimental project, where the students can put all those things they’ve learned in class to the practical test."
The two bedroom, two bath, 1,200-square foot house (with another 1,200 feet in porches, cisterns, and landscaping) sits on a 1.5-acre site on the donor’s 1,000-acre ranch in Johnson City, about an hour outside Austin. The students juried their own internal competition for the final design, which consists of a structure comprising wood and steel framing, and poured-in-place concrete. Rammed earth, straw bale construction, and other experimental building technologies were researched, but with such a small team to do all the work, simplicity and affordability affected most choices. "We’re actually out there figuring out how to do the hands-on work," says grad student Anthony Lore, who serves as the field coordinator for the team. "Some of us have done construction before, but none of us had build a house from the ground up."
A big part of the success of the program is UT’s own willingness to support the students doing the actual work, and to find ways around the usual liability issues that stymie similar programs. Construction is dangerous work, and insuring students to work off of school grounds can be tricky. The school found a way to make it work by giving the project six months to come together, then releasing liability for the property. That way, the donor assumes ownership of the house, and tours and learning expeditions to the house fall outside of UT’s responsibility. Also, students learned the basics of construction safety by taking six units of safety training mandated by the Texas State Workers Compensation Commission.
With completion of the house planned for early September, Harpman is now "courting" three possible donors for UT’s next design/build studio, and she and the students have submitted the program to the Green Building Council as a replicable education prototype.
"If you have a supportive University willing to take some risks, this kind of program could happen anywhere."
To find out more information about Design > Build > Texas, and to follow the construction process with photos, go to www.designbuildtexas.com.
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