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KU architecture students are building a small house with big ambitions
LAWRENCE — Dirt Works Studio, an academic design-build studio at the University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design, has designed and is currently building Phoenix House, a small, solar-powered house designed to assist members of the Lawrence community in transitioning from houselessness to a secure home.
KU Engineering to honor 2 alumni with Distinguished Engineering Service Award
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas School of Engineering alumni Zack Holland and Brian McClendon will receive the school’s highest award in a ceremony set for 6 p.m. May 2. The Distinguished Engineering Service Award is given each year to individuals who have maintained close association with the school and have made outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and to society.
Afrofuturist performance group to offer 3 world-building experiences April 24-26 in Lawrence
LAWRENCE – The AfroRithm Futures Group will offer three public events during a residency this week at the University of Kansas. Building upon this year’s KU Common Book and related programming, the group offers facilitated gameplay for participants to imagine future challenges and opportunities. Each event requires registration.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Dan Rolf, School of Architecture & Design, 785-864-3027, [email protected], @ArcD_KU
KU architecture students are building a small house with big ambitions
LAWRENCE — Dirt Works Studio, an academic design-build studio at the University of Kansas School of Architecture & Design, has designed and is currently building Phoenix House, a small, solar-powered house designed to assist members of the Lawrence community in transitioning from houselessness to a secure home.
Working in collaboration with Tenants to Homeowners, inc. (TTH), a Lawrence nonprofit that has helped more than 350 families become homeowners, Dirt Works Studio aims to provide TTH with a repeatable model for a home that can provide comfort and stability for occupants as they work to reach personal goals.
Dirt Works Studio allows third-year KU architecture students to explore innovative new methods of construction while serving the local community.
“The mission of Dirt Works Studio balances care for our local communities, concern for the health of the planet and a dedication to educate future leaders in the design of a more sustainable, equitable and inspired built environment,” said Chad Kraus, associate professor of architecture and founding director of Dirt Works Studio.
Phoenix House has been designed using an innovative cross-laminated timber (CLT) shell, wrapped in a highly insulated, air-tight building envelope, and clad with a wood rain screen. Designed to accommodate 1-2 people, the home’s interior is characterized by durable materials and surfaces, including CLT timber walls and ceilings and exposed concrete floors with radiant floor heating. Wood surfaces were prioritized for aesthetics and as a natural solution for humidity regulation. The color, tactility and smell of wood, along with its positive effects on interior air quality, have documented regenerative and stress reduction outcomes.
“This partnership exemplifies how innovative design, education and service-based learning can be advanced through public/private partnerships,” said Nicholas Ward, TTH assistant director. “Through Phoenix House, TTH has the unique opportunity to learn from these young, enthusiastic designers. The designers, in turn, are offered a glimpse into the world and work of affordable housing from their partners at TTH. When the designers of tomorrow are informed by the struggles of today, their work can’t help but to be infused with empathy. A great partnership, to say the least.”
Phoenix House carries on the hands-on, experiential learning focus of KU’s architecture & design school. For more than three decades, students have learned to envision, design and construct innovative built works. KU student design-build projects have included LEED Platinum and net-zero energy buildings, modular furniture systems, accessible community parks, a mobile grocery store and many other impactful projects.
Phoenix House is located on the 1100 block of Oregon Street in Lawrence. The home is expected to be completed in late spring this year.
Student Reese Gilmore of Leawood said that working directly with neighborhood residents to create something that gives back to the local community has been a fulfilling experience.
“The process of designing and building an affordable home has presented many challenges but has also provided unforgettable experiences, such as working with peers, engineers, suppliers and partnering with Tenants to Homeowners to make a one-of-a-kind affordable small home,” Gilmore said.
Spring 2024 Dirt Works Studio students include Gilmore; Corrie Bolton, Fulton, Missouri; Julia Bond, Kansas City, Missouri; Grace Beirne, St Louis; Morgan Campbell, Overland Park; Makenna Dawson, Blue Springs, Missouri; Hayley Ford, Olathe; Aidan Hall, Downers Grove, Illinois; Alyda Hunnicutt, Leawood; Morgan Kime, St Louis; Spencer Landis, Fenton, Missouri; Adin Mehanovic, Kansas City, Missouri; Samantha Weidner, Barnhart, Missouri; and Amanda Willen, Florissant, Missouri.
For more information about the project, contact Chad Kraus, KU; or Nicholas Ward, Tenants to Homeowners.
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Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, [email protected], @kuengineering
KU Engineering to honor 2 alumni with Distinguished Engineering Service Award
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas School of Engineering alumni Zack Holland and Brian McClendon will receive the school’s highest award in a ceremony set for 6 p.m. May 2. The Distinguished Engineering Service Award (DESA) is given each year to individuals who have maintained close association with the school and have made outstanding contributions to the engineering profession and to society.
“Beyond their groundbreaking achievements in their respective fields, this year winners each have a track record of remarkable service and generosity to the School of Engineering,” said Dean of Engineering Mary Rezac. “We are honored to recognize their accomplishments and grateful for their continuing support.”
The School of Engineering Advisory Board has given the Distinguished Engineering Service Award annually since 1980. The award is made on the basis of an individual’s contribution to the public good, governmental service or the educational system, or contributions to the theories and practices of engineering, research and development in new fields of engineering or direction of an organization that has made exceptional contributions in design, production and development.
About the honorees:
Zack Holland
Over the course of his professional journey in the oil and gas industry, Zack Holland has made significant contributions at multiple companies in Kansas and Oklahoma. In addition, his good humor and conscientious engagement make him a model advocate and champion for all things KU.
Holland earned his bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering from KU in 1996 and later received a master’s in business administration from Oklahoma State University.
After earning his degree from KU, he spent the next 17 years as an engineer for five different oil and gas companies (Anadarko, Samson, Dominion, Chesapeake Energy and Devon Energy). Through his time at these companies, he gained an understanding of the industry and how businesses needed to operate to be successful.
Because of his ability to work with diverse groups, he was consistently given higher levels of responsibility — leading teams of geologists, geophysicists, production engineers, landmen, drilling engineers and regulatory personnel.
With that experience as a foundation, in 2013, he left private employment to become a co-founder of Felix Energy, a private-equity backed startup venture in the oil and gas industry headquartered in Denver. He served as vice president for engineering for the new company and was involved in staffing and project acquisition.
Under Holland’s direction, Felix Energy identified its first significant project in 2013 in the Anadarko Basin, targeting stacked reservoirs using two-mile horizontal laterals coupled with large, hydraulic fracture treatments. The culmination of that project was a sale to his former employer, Devon Energy, for $2.5 billion in 2015.
Immediately recapitalizing, Felix Energy was on the hunt for another project and landed in the Delaware Basin in West Texas, where once again, utilizing similar technologies, it cracked the code in the Wolfcamp formation. That project was sold to WPX Energy for $2.5 billion in 2020.
After Felix came to an end in 2022, Holland traveled with his family and also became an angel investor in a few small projects in areas of interest to him, including agriculture and finance.
In 2023, Holland founded Batavia Energy to invest in a startup founded by another KU petroleum engineer, Daniel Ott, focusing on mining bitcoin. That project has been operational since late 2023 and remains active today.
Beyond his career in industry, Holland has demonstrated passion for his alma mater.
In 2021, he provided $600,000 to elevate a previously established fellowship in Professor Emeritus Don Green’s name that was initiated and funded mainly by former students. With Holland’s support, that fellowship is now the Don W. Green Chemical & Petroleum Engineering Professorship, which is awarded to a faculty member in promotion of excellence in teaching. The fund is also used to support undergraduate research, teaching fellowships and graduate student fellowships.
Holland shared his insight on the needs and direction of the petroleum engineering profession through his service on the advisory board for Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering from 2006 to 2010, coinciding with a period of growth for the department. Additional faculty were coming on board, and planning was under way for new buildings (Ritchie and Slawson halls) which came to fruition in 2018.
Beyond the engineering school, Holland’s philanthropic contributions to the university are significant. He received a music scholarship as a student, was a member of the KU University Band, and he remains a passionate supporter of the School of Music.
He established a scholarship to honor the memory of Thomas Stidham, professor emeritus of music, who directed the KU University Band when Holland was a student. He has also supported KU Music students by sponsoring international travel opportunities and partnering with the school in its exchange relationship with the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music in Milan.
In addition to his aforementioned support of the schools of Engineering and Music, Holland provided a $1 million gift to the KU Alumni Association. His support was critical in getting the new Jayhawk Welcome Center off the ground and into reality.
He also established the Terry Wilson leadership award at KU’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, and in his hometown of Sublette, he established a scholarship program in honor of his high school math teacher, Richard Duncan, for graduates pursuing STEM-related programs.
Holland resides in Denver with his wife, Melissa, an Emporia State graduate. They have been married for 25 years and have three daughters – Meghan (college graduate, working in Denver), Zoe (attending college in Chicago) and Reese (a high school senior and future Jayhawk).
Brian McClendon
Brian McClendon has changed the way we view and interact with geographic information. As co-creator of Google Earth, he made Lawrence the literal center of the digital globe.
He is dedicated to excellence in engineering and to innovation in technology. He has been a lifelong friend to KU and the School of Engineering, generously giving his time, talent and support to many KU programs over the years.
McClendon earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1986. He then spent eight years at Silicon Graphics developing high-end 3D graphics workstations, laying a foundation for his later achievements.
In 2001, he co-founded Keyhole, where he co-developed the Keyhole Earth Viewer and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) — an XML schema for expressing geographic information. This became an open standard for GIS data in 2008, and 13 of McClendon’s 41 patents are related to KML. Keyhole was later acquired by Google and released as Google Earth, revolutionizing how we interact with geospatial data.
McClendon led Google’s geospatial division for 10 years, driving the development of Google Maps, Street View, Google Earth and Google Earth Engine — a program allowing researchers to detect deforestation, classify land cover and estimate forest biomass and carbon.
His commitment to innovation continued at Uber, where he served for two years as vice president of mapping. It continues now at Niantic, where he leads engineering in mapping and augmented reality. For 30 years, he has advised and invested in hundreds of technology founders, helping them on their own journey to innovation.
In addition to his trailblazing career, McClendon has shown a remarkable commitment to his alma mater. He has funded graduate and undergraduate engineering scholarships, the LEEP2 atrium bears his name, and he has given substantial support to the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science faculty retention fund. He served on advisory boards for the engineering school and EECS.
As a research professor in the EECS department, McClendon hosted open office hours and taught Startup School, a six-week course to help technology founders realize their vision. He has provided assistance, access, inspiration and support to future engineers by giving talks to students at all levels of education.
McClendon’s career achievements have earned him national and international recognition. He was given the United Nations Champions of the Earth Award in 2013. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2015 and the National Academy of Inventors in 2023, and he received an honorary doctorate from KU in 2016. In addition, Google Earth is now displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the British Science Museum in London.
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Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”
a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.
https://kansaspublicradio.org/podcast/when-experts-attack
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Contact: Emily Ryan, The Commons, 785-864-6293, [email protected], @TheCommonsKU
Afrofuturist performance group to offer 3 world-building experiences April 24-26 in Lawrence
LAWRENCE – The AfroRithm Futures Group (ARFG) will be in Lawrence April 24-26, offering three public events during a residency at the University of Kansas.
Building upon this year’s KU Common Book, “Parable of the Sower,” by Octavia Butler, and connected author talk April 25 by N.K. Jemisin; the University Honors Program’s Common Cause; the Center for Community Outreach’s Into the Streets Week; and The Commons’ programming theme, Fertile Soils, Abundant Worlds, partners across KU have come together to support this program.
ARFG includes three artists – Lonny Brooks, Ahmed Best and Jade Fabello. The group originated when Brooks, a professor at California State University, met game designer Eli Kosminsky, then created AfroRithm from the Future.
In 2019, Brooks met Best, professor of film and actor entrepreneurship at University of Southern California School for the Dramatic Arts, who serves as the emcee for workshop facilitation.
Fabello, operations manager, brings the work of radical imagination and world-building to new audiences.
“It’s important for us to be considering ways of addressing and imagining futures that our current systems aren’t built for,” said Emily Ryan, director of The Commons. “Afrofuturist thinkers are leaders on liberation and creative flourishing. To bring this work into our communities locally, where we can consider challenges and imagine possibilities together, will be a wonderful opportunity for folks across generations.”
Gameplay happens when a deck of ARFG cards is distributed throughout the audience. Facilitators lead attendees through imagining exercises and invite the audience into suggesting possible methods and objects for the collective future. A graphic recorder documents the process, and an illustrative banner serves as a reference for the imagined world.
Each event has a central theme, and audience members are invited to participate in facilitated gameplay.
Upcoming events
World-Building and Radical Imagination
7 p.m. April 24, Liberty Hall
Service and the Future
5 p.m. April 25, Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Union
Butler, Jemisin, and Black Futurists
10 a.m. April 26, Hall Center for the Humanities Conference Hall
No experience or prior knowledge of Afrofuturism is required. Each event requires registration. For more information, visit the event website.
Giselle Anatol, Hall Center for the Humanities director, won a 2023 grant from the Achievement & Assessment Institute to support and expand the reach of the AfroRithms work at KU, partnering with the Lawrence Arts Center and Spencer Museum of Art to offer local artist grants to those who create artifacts for the future that result from the workshops.
“In the early 1990s, Octavia Butler penned ‘Parable of the Sower,’ which begins in the year 2024 — 30 years in the future,” Anatol said. “For many people today, looking into the future is a frightening thing. For many, it is nearly impossible; they can’t envision what our world will be like in three years, far less three decades. This is a perfect moment to participate in these workshops, allowing us to bring the spirit of play and imagination and collaboration and storytelling together in a powerfully forward-thinking way.”
Partners supporting this residency include The Commons at KU; the Hall Center for the Humanities; the Achievement & Assessment Institute; the Center for Public Partnerships & Research; the Kenneth Spencer Lecture Fund; the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging; the KU Center for Community Outreach; the KU Honors Program; the Spencer Museum of Art; the Institute for Policy & Social Research Center for Compassionate and Sustainable Communities; KU Libraries; the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences; the Peace and Conflict Studies Program and the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications.
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