photo by: Contributed

The finished house at 1144 E. 12th St., designed and built by KU architecture students, is pictured here. The house will have an open house on Saturday, May 16, 2026 to show off the students' work and sustainable design.

When you get a look at the newly finished house at 1144 E. 12th St. in Lawrence, you see a clean, modern design, 16 solar panels and luxury appliances that work towards sustainability. Less visible are signs of the unique designers who crafted the home — University of Kansas students.

For over 30 years, KU professor Dan Rockhill has led Studio 804, an intensive capstone course at University of Kansas’ architecture school. Each year, starting in August, Rockhill meets the new class of around 20 students — he said this class included 19 students this year — who work “day in, day out six days a week” to complete a house designed with sustainability in mind.

This latest project will host an open house Saturday that will show off the house and its sustainable technology. Rockhill said these open houses are not only a chance to highlight the students’ dedication, but they also illustrate how homeowners can implement sustainable technology moving forward.

“This stuff works. I’m proud to be able to demonstrate it,” Rockhill said.

Rockhill said this year’s project had a little more design intricacies than other years. The one-story, two-bedroom house also includes an accessory dwelling unit in the back, but the most obvious features are large columns, which Rockhill said are being reused from a house in Los Angeles that was demolished in the 1970s, that serve as the structure of the house. Compared to a normal “stick build” project, Rockhill said the beams need to be put in with special conditions, and the students did a good job in working through that difficulty.

Along with the reused columns, the house is filled with sustainable features from top to bottom. The solar panels on the roof are an obvious example, but Rockhill said the house has special lighting, “super insulated walls” and even a water system that slightly reduces the water pressure to not consume as much water. Even the floors help make the house more sustainable. Through a “passive solar” design, as the sun rises in the east each morning, it will warm the concrete floor of the living room. The aim is to “trap in heat,” Rockhill said, and then give off heat in the evening when the temperatures are cooler.

photo by: Contributed

The interior of Studio 804’s capstone project, a house built at 1144 E. 12th St. in Lawrence, is seen here.

All that effort — including rigorous testing to make sure the house is not leaking air — helped give the house a LEED Platinum standard, the highest rating given by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for creating an ecofriendly building. Rockhill said going through those processes gives the students knowledge of those standards and trains them to think greener moving forward.

“They then carry the banner of sustainability into their next jobs,” Rockhill said.

The students carry a lot more than an ecofriendly lens in their design career. Rockhill said one of the things he learned when he first started teaching was that most of architectural education was focused solely on design and not hands-on work. Nearly all of the work on the house was done by the students, from pouring the concrete to hanging the drywall.

Rockhill said due to the rigorous work of the Studio 804 project, employers view this one-year class as two years of experience in the field, which raises the salary floor for the graduates who complete this course. He knows the project is a lot to ask of the students, but he is impressed by their drive.

“It takes a lot of work,” Rockhill said. “I admire their tenacity.”

Over the years, the projects completed by the KU students of Studio 804 have gotten international recognition. Rockhill said the open house events are also attended by sometimes over a thousand people to look at the sustainable infrastructure in the designs.

While this project is finished, another Studio 804 project will start again next August, with another brand new class of students. Rockhill said although the process can be exhausting, he has “stuck it out” and truly enjoyed helping teach the students of Studio 804 because of the confidence they gain from the course.

“They come into (the class) completely intimidated,” Rockhill said. “When they leave, they have this feeling they can do almost anything.”

photo by: Contributed

KU architecture students pour concrete while building a house for the Studio 804 project. Their instructor, Dan Rockhill, far left, said it is important for design students to get hands-on work.

photo by: Contributed

KU architecture students work on their capstone project for Studio 804, a house at 1144 E. 12th St. in Lawrence that is sustainably designed.