PREFAB HOUSES
Studio 804 is a not-for-profit 501(c) 3 corporation whose participants are graduate students of the University of Kansas’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning. These early projects set the stage for what is now a full-year studio committed to a synthesized educational experience that focuses on the research and development of inventive building solutions that address pressing issues that face our built environment. Each year provides the students an experience encompassing all aspects of the design and construction process from design, to working with zoning officials, to driving nails.
It all began in 1995 as one time effort to stabilize and build a roof over a small historic masonry school house. It did not take long for the enthusiasm the students had for getting their hands in wet concrete to become evident. Studio 804 has designed and built a project each year since. They started with small scale studios, pavilions and houses close to campus. They were not planned in advance, but were developed during the semester and built in a few months.
After that students were signing up for a design/build experience and the work begins to be planned in advance. These projects were socially responsive affordable and accessible infill projects done in Lawrence, Kansas with funding from local governmental housing authorities using Housing and Neighborhood Block Grant funds.
Studio 804 did these projects for five years and then looking for new challenges and more design freedom they started working in Kansas City, Kansas and did the work shown in this document. They creatively engaged marginal neighborhoods to build affordable housing through Community Development Corporations in the KC metro area. The goal was to seed urban change through creative, modern solutions to the housing problems the city faced. Do to the logistics of working 40 miles from campus these projects became award winning examples of prefabrication in architecture.
These projects played a major role in Studio 804’s evolution into an educational model that focuses on the future of sustainable design and how new and emerging technologies can be combined with passive strategies and the responsible use of resources to create the type of net-zero buildings that are likely to be necessary in the not too distant future.
Images and Plans
Technical Description
With a very few exceptions all of this work is built by the students. From the moment a Studio 804 class gathers in August the work is hands-on. Even the design phase includes working on mock ups. We do everything ourselves; the students are on site every day working on the excavation, pouring concrete, framing walls, welding steel, laying masonry, installing roofing, folding flashings, and setting windows and doors. We run plumbing lines and set fixtures, and we even do work on the mechanical systems and as electricians. In short, there is little about building the students won’t have a chance to experience during a Studio 804 project.