A Real-World Project

This housing-centered design research is one way the university can fulfill its land-grant mission of service to the state and its residents. A school of architecture and design is uniquely suited to tackle this issue, Folan said, because the scale of the problem is substantial, it requires both time to study and multiple solutions, and design students can collaborate and consider various facets.

“The amount of time that they’ll invest on that along with the resources that a Research 1 university has available to bring to bear on the problem allows us to focus on dimensions of the challenge that are not viable in the private sector,” Folan said.

And in the context of offering students professional design programs that eventually lead to licensure, the practical knowledge is invaluable.

“There’s no better way for a student to learn before they graduate than to work on a project that involves real clients, real challenges, and requires them to engage with every aspect of the professional realm,” Folan said. “As an educational experience, it really does model very closely what students will be encountering in a traditional professional practice.”

Of the 18 students in the spring 2023 studio, 10 were graduating seniors. They documented their process through videos, construction documents and scaled models — all resources for anyone to learn the process.

Trace Donaldson, from Marion, Arkansas, who also worked as an intern on the project during summer 2022, said the wave layered material substantially reduces the carbon footprint because the boards aren’t permanently affixed and can be reused. They were cinched together with metal rods threaded through aligned holes in the boards.

Because the wave layered timber is a newer material system, students in the spring 2023 studio could experiment with it and test it in ways that will benefit the labor force, Donaldson said.

For Zack Kress, from Denton, Texas, the hands-on project was a big appeal of this studio. With much of the concept and general design already resolved, their task was to “try to make it a reality.” That included a lot of problem solving, testing ideas, and figuring out the details — like finding the exact spots on the board to drill hundreds of holes so they would all line up for assembly.

After interning at a couple of architecture firms and developers while in school, Lindsay Anderson, from Grapevine, Texas, looked forward to getting her hands on a project and learning the practical side of design. Taking part in both the fall 2022 and spring 2023 studios, she also was keen to contribute to a solution to the region’s housing crisis.

Anderson said the professors give students confidence and encouragement that they’re capable of these real-world projects. And these future professionals need to understand them.

“As architects, it’s very important to communicate with people but also understand how things work practically. We can’t tell people to build something if we don’t study it and know how it works ourselves,” she said. “You’ve got to know just enough.”

While students commonly test their design concepts with small-scale models, most of them have not built a design at full scale. This studio provided that experience.

“We learned a lot about how long things take. We have a better understanding of the construction process,” Anderson said. “I feel like that makes us more empathetic in the real world.”

Later this year, design students will disassemble the current full-scale mockup and reassemble it on the lawn of Vol Walker Hall — to observe how it weathers, see how the angles of the sun strike it, and monitor its overall performance in myriad conditions.

Eventually, they will build a full-scale, 500-square-foot prototype home with 700 square feet of expansion capacity on a site in Fayetteville, applying what they’ve learned so far. That unit will be replicated twice more by private sector partners to test market viability. By demonstrating a quality design made with innovative technology, they can help people rethink traditional notions of a home.

ReView: Spring/Summer 2023