Katie McEvily
News Reporter
Today marks the beginning of the end of a project for 18 graduate students in the University of Houston's Gerald Hines College of Architecture.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held on the multi-purpose outdoor space for HISD's Samuel Clark Red Elementary School that the UH students have been working on since last summer.
Focusing on Red's function as a science and magnet school, the students came up with the concept that is now in the final landscaping stage.
"We wanted the project to demonstrate how some of the principles of responding to the natural environment can be a kind of stepping stone for (students) in their understanding of the ecosystem," said Patrick Peters, director of graduate studies.
The Level I graduate students spent their first day of class visiting the site and meeting with the school's principal, lead science teacher and Parent-Teacher Organization president. Upon returning to the studio with a defined budget, they began documenting the physical characteristics of the site.
From that point, four design teams worked to meet the needs of a covered outdoor science classroom for kindergarten through fifth grade.
"The main focus was to teach science however they choose to, and to have that available as an option as much of the year as possible," Peters said.
The school officials and a panel of architects critiqued, evaluated and offered suggestions during the presentation of the models. Incorporating the best aspects from each proposal, a fifth and final scheme evolved that everyone would work on for the remainder of the project.
Encompassing a 1,161-square-foot space, the ultimate design features a steel truss roof system raised 8 feet by the support of four concrete columns. A gutter spans the length of the roof, channeling rainwater into a cistern, then depositing it into a fish pond.
Peters agreed the students' response to the gutter was exceptional because it displays a natural process in the environment through its design. Besides its functional duties, the gutter can teach the children how water can be collected and recycled.
The students gained hands-on experience in each part of the construction process. They worked from scratch, ordering the parts for the trusses, welding the trusses, building moveable wooden benches, assembling the formwork for the concrete and laying the earthen berm behind the curved concrete retaining wall.
Most of the students had never worked with materials like concrete and steel before.
"It gave me a better understanding of all materials and how reading something from a book and doing construction are two different things," said Anna Guerra, a student who worked on the project.
The designing stages did not come without unanticipated changes. Alterations in the engineering of the gutter and use of banana trees in place of bamboo plants offered the students an important lesson in adaptability.