Dan Rockhill
While working on his MArch degree at UB, Dan Rockhill was always interested in building but felt somewhat out of place in the climate of architectural education. “[The late] professor Mike Brill encouraged me to write my thesis on design/build, something I have an interest in, have built my own practice around, and which propels the efforts of Studio 804.”
Rockhill, professor of architecture at the University of Kansas, founded Studio 804, an intense five-month program in which the school’s third-year graduate students design and build an affordable home in Lawrence or nearby Kansas City. All building components are fabricated by students under Rockhill’s direction.
In 2003, he and his students won a prestigious Home of the Year award from Architecture magazine for their “Modular 1” prefab home. Winning the Architecture magazine competition was an unprecedented honor because a student project had never before won a professional competition.
Although the prefab concept for “Modular 1” received enormous attention, the teacher in Rockhill prefers to discuss how it was done.
“This is what differentiates our efforts from the vast majority of other programs,” Rockhill says. “What’s unique is the fact that we [first, Rockhill and Associates, his private practice, and then Studio 804] have been doing this for a long time and have become a poster child for bringing some building experience into architectural education.”
A just published book by Tuns Press, Designing & Building: Rockhill and Associates, which highlights his work, is edited by Brian Carter, dean of UB’s School of Architecture and Planning. Carter reemphasizes Rockhill’s philosophy: “By building these projects as well as designing them he has not only been able to stretch budgets and achieve high standards of workmanship but expand the design process to encourage experimentation, take in searches for new materials and consider the ingenious recycling of others.”
Although Rockhill humbly refers to Rockhill and Associates as a tiny firm working in a conservative state, his work receives national and worldwide recognition. A visionary architect whose range of projects includes both ends of the design spectrum, he not only stretches the limits of his imagination in contemporary residential concepts, but also has won a dozen awards for historic preservation work.
The future holds even more challenges, including the possibility of creating a prefab manufacturing facility. Also in the works: informal consultation on post-hurricane reconstruction with Tulane University’s architecture faculty.
Originally appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of UB Today. Written by Pat Pollock.
