Students Assemble Cubes for Greensburg

Reprinted Courtesy of K-State Media Relations and Marketing

Students at Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design are turning the experience gained in last year’s Project Solar House to a new undertaking: Greensburg Cubed, which will provide that tornado-ravaged town with 10-foot portable demonstrations of ways to meet basic needs in a sustainable fashion.

The cubes will start construction in late March near the K-State campus and will ship to Greensburg in time for the first anniversary of the disaster on May 4. The prefabricated modules include “the ice cube,” designed to provide clean water; “the green haus” for promoting off-the-shelf solutions to reconstruction problems; and “the recycling bin,” which will help high school students get a recycling program off the ground, according to Larry Bowne, assistant professor of architecture.

All the cubes will take advantage of techniques and philosophies that the solar house demonstrated at last year’s Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. Students will use such technologies as vegetated “green roofs,” structurally integrated panels that speed construction, and solar power and wind-generated electricity, where necessary.

“These ‘pods’ are being designed as teaching tools and building blocks for residents and business owners as they strive to rebuild their community green,” said architecture student Aaron Vanderpool, Blue Springs, Mo.

Vanderpool and other members of Bowne’s fifth-year design-build studio came up with these and other notions as a way to participate in the rebuilding of Greensburg.

“It’s difficult for students, who have intense passion but also intensive schedules, to make an appropriate response to disaster,” Bowne said. “Disasters don’t have calendars. One of the things we’re trying to do with Greensburg Cubed is to see how and whether students can contribute, given their many commitments.”

As well as demonstrating building systems and technologies, the cubes ideally will continue to serve a purpose afterward, Bowne said.

So far enough money has been donated to finance construction of four cubes, Vanderpool said.

Though the cubes’ primary mission is to inform Greensburg residents, students hope to spread the lessons of sustainable methods far and wide. The cubes will take a round-about route to Kiowa County, landing in the Crossroads art district of Kansas City, Mo., possibly in time to be part of a Discovery Channel program. Stops in other Kansas cities are in the planning stages, Bowne said.

All students working on the project are fifth-year architecture majors.

They include:

Clemente Jaquez-Herrera, Garden City.

From Greater Kansas City: Erin Wages, Olathe, and Collin Curry, Overland Park.

From Manhattan: Jacob Henley and Jessica Williams.

Skyler Bonser, Wichita.

From out of state: Sally Maddock, Lakewood, Colo.; and Melody Jacobson, Priest River, Idaho.

From Missouri: Aaron Vanderpool, Blue Springs; Malcolm Watkins, Gower; Adrienne Stolwyk, Liberty; Andrew Becker, Nixa; and Jonathan C. Anderson, St. Louis.

Laura Wilke, Columbus, Neb.

For more information, contact:
Larry Bowne, 785.532.1174
Diane Potts, 785.532.1090