Greenhouse
C. Gibbs College of Architecture provides fifth-year students with the chance to build a real-world, full-scale project for an underrepresented or under-resourced community. In recent years, projects have included a greenhouse for Mark Twain Elementary School in Oklahoma City and a mobile medical unit for the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes.
Patrick Duffy, the John Rex superintendent, said he’d heard about greenhouses built at other schools and reached out to the OU design-and-build team about a similar project.
“We’d been interested in a greenhouse. My idea of a greenhouse is probably what most people would think of, a small little greenhouse in a backyard,” Duffy said. “We reached out to them and realized what they did was much larger. Once we talked about it, and saw that we could do it on the school grounds, then we decided to move forward with it.”
The OU course is supervised by Bryan Bloom, an assistant professor of construction science, and Ken Marold, a lecturer in the College of Architecture. They complete the design work for the projects ahead of time. Bloom and Marold lead Renegade Design+Build, a Norman-based entity that’s part of the College of Architecture.
Then, during the spring semester, students take the design from plans to completion, fabricating the necessary components in the university’s “Creating Making Lab,” working in the field to prepare the construction site and eventually completing the on-site build.
“A lot of times, we’re focused on agriculture and community-based work,” Marold said.
Bloom said students in the class must work on a tight time frame of roughly two semesters.
“It’s pretty ambitious as a class,” Bloom said. “It’s something that students are choosing to participate in. It’s not a requirement, so usually the students want the extra effort these projects take.”
John Rex greenhouse, garden will provide learning opportunities, as well as food
Audas said the greenhouse and gardens will provide hands-on opportunities to teach and learn science at John Rex, a public school that serves both elementaryand middle-school students.
“Inside of our greenhouse, we have an area that’s an outdoor classroom, and we also have picnic tables that will be a second outdoor classroom,” she said. “If we net any butterflies, we can go right here and work with those hands-on. Also, if we’re going to do studies about seeds, we can come right here and go find seeds.”
The garden and greenhouse will produce fruits and vegetables. Some of that will be used in student lunches, and the school would like to partner with agencies and restaurants who could use the food as part of their menus, Duffy said. Among those are Sailor and the Dock, a market business incubator located just down the street from the school along Sheridan Avenue in Film Row.
“We want to find out how we can give back to the community and make sure what we do is for a purpose when we grow,” Duffy said.
Holt noted how John Rex was a vision of the “MAPS for Kids” program approved by Oklahoma City voters in 2001. Back then, Holt said, a mentality that downtown “was largely dead” still permeated throughout the city.
“It seemed like every aspect of life was lacking from downtown Oklahoma City, so the vision here was to have a school,” Holt said. “Among the other elements of a great downtown, if you really want people to live down here, and have families, you’re going to have to provide an education for them and you’re going to have to have a school.
“It has turned out so wonderful that we have a great school down here.”
He noted that the school’s new greenhouse will add something else many downtowns lack: a link to the city’s agricultural roots, something students now have a chance to learn more about.
“We need to make those connections for them, and this provides a special opportunity for that, as well,” Holt said.