print this article | 
e-mail this article
comment 
Clovis Memorial District Conference Center Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre Deaf Culture Centre Gentry Public Library City of Phoenix Neighborhood Resource Center Orange Memorial Park Recreation Building SOS Children’s Village Lavezzorio Community Center Sunset Community Centre5.4.7 Arts Center The Seattle Public Library Southwest Branch Temecula Public Library5.4.7 Arts Center
Studio 804 prefabricated and completed a LEED-Platinum community arts center for this tornado-ravaged town in just four months.
If you wanted to settle in a fine place that is safe, secure, and filled with friendly people, you could hardly do better than Greensburg, a town on the plains of southwest Kansas, where one’s sense of well-being can be threatened by little other than occasional bursts of severe weather. Unfortunately, such was the case when, in just a few minutes on May 4, 2007, a category EF5 tornado blew most of it away.
Above: RECORD editor Charles Linn visits Dan Rockhill/Studio 804’s art center in Greensburg, Kansas.
Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
The students of Studio 804, the intensive design-build program at the University of Kansas’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning, sought a way to contribute to Greensburg’s rebirth. In December of 2007, they accepted an invitation to construct a small arts center, with space for a gallery, classes, and live performances. It would be LEED Platinum, as are all public buildings constructed after the storm.
Students enrolled in Professor Dan Rockhill’s full-time, one-semester, graduate-level class had to accomplish the work in four months, in time for the one-year anniversary of the storm. Studio 804 has a national reputation, having built nine single-family homes in nine years. Its students do the design work; provide labor, including skilled work such as plumbing and wiring; raise money; develop the budget; keep the books; and solicit donations of building materials.
The 5.4.7 Arts Center, named to remember the date of the storm, has modest requirements, and the plan is simplicity itself: Starting with the gallery, a meeting room, lobby, kitchenette, and bathrooms are arranged linearly, in that sequence. The directness of the plan belies the building’s complex detailing; its construction technique; and the additional systems, energy modeling, and commissioning that are required of LEED-rated buildings. The building’s site is flat, and so the structure itself was raised on a 3-foot-high plinth to give it prominence.
Formal name of project: 5.4.7 Arts Center
Location:
Greensburg, Kansas
Gross square footage: 1600, not including basement
Total construction cost: $336,500
Completion Date: June, 2008
Owner: 5.4.7 Arts Center
Designer-Builders:
Dan Rockhill/ Studio 804
1465 Jayhawk Blvd., Lawrence, KS. 66045
(p)785.864.4024
(f) 785.864.5185
del.icio.us
Reader Comments:
