Advanced / Options | Studio | Design-Build

Design-Build Studios

ENVD 3300|University of Colorado Boulder|Three projects, 2017 to 2019

Built work changes the stakes of design education.

These studios move beyond hypothetical projects. Students work with communities and institutional clients to define a need, establish a program, test alternatives, present proposals, develop a shared design, manage budgets and schedules, fabricate components, and construct work that must perform for real people.

A completed drawing can conceal an unresolved decision. A completed building cannot. Design-build makes each choice tangible. Material dimensions affect cost. Details affect assembly. Delays affect other people. A concept must survive client review, permitting, procurement, weather, fabrication tolerances, and the collective labor required to bring it into the world.

Each studio operates as an interdisciplinary design-build practice. Students contribute through different strengths while remaining accountable to the whole project. I establish the framework, milestones, safety standards, and expectations for quality. Students learn through direct experimentation, peer knowledge, professional collaboration, and the consequences of the decisions they make together. Because each project was produced collectively, this page credits the complete studio team wherever the archive provides a reliable roster. Individual attribution is less important here than recognizing the shared authorship that made construction possible.

Studio Framing

Teaching Through Consequence

Design-build has been one of the most consequential parts of my teaching. It places students in a situation where design decisions cannot remain abstract. The work has a client, a budget, a schedule, a site, and people waiting to use it. Every decision carries a real cost, and every unresolved detail eventually appears in the construction.

My role in these studios is to establish the framework and standards that make ambitious work possible. I guide the client process, structure milestones, teach professional project phases, help students recognize risk, and push the work toward a level of craft that respects both the client and the labor invested by the group. At the same time, students learn an enormous amount from one another. Construction makes knowledge visible and shareable.

I am proud of the completed work, but I am equally proud of what it required from the students. They had to move past the point where a rendering could carry the project. They had to make decisions precise enough for someone else to build, and then become the people doing the building.

Spring + Maymester 2018 | ENVD 3300-050 / ENVD 3200-001

Luminous Ticket Centers

Client: Denver Botanic Gardens

Denver Mayor's Design Award
Architecture MasterPrize

Two mobile ticket centers replaced temporary winter tents with illuminated structures designed around staff comfort, visitor arrival, mobility, and the visual identity of Denver Botanic Gardens. The course joined a sixteen-week design studio with a three-week Maymester build, moving from a small birdhouse craft exercise through concept design, schematic design, design development, and construction documentation before the class became an intensive fabrication and construction team. The completed units use illuminated acrylic facades and digitally fabricated interior elements to create compact public architecture that remains functional in winter conditions.

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Illuminated ticket centers

Student design-build team

Ticket center construction

Completed luminous exterior

Fabricated ticket center interior

Denver Mayor's Design Award

Project brief and outcome

Client collaboration title

Project Team

Spring 2019 | ENVD 3300-060

Children's Outdoor Classroom

Client: Denver Botanic Gardens

A semi-enclosed space at the Morrison Discovery Center became a flexible three-season environment for children's education, planting, cooking demonstrations, celebrations, and unscripted play. Students interviewed the client, established the program, researched children and educational environments, developed the design through professional project phases, managed cost and scheduling, fabricated components, and completed construction within a sixteen-week semester. The course archive records the result succinctly: on time and on budget, anticipated to support approximately 12,000 visitors each year.

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Course brief and outcome

Existing garden condition, before

Design-build studio team

Client design presentation

Outdoor classroom axonometric

On-site classroom construction

Installing fabricated components

Furniture prototype construction

Completed outdoor classroom

Living wall lighting detail

Illuminated classroom at night

Children using the classroom

Design criteria and schemes

Furniture and storage prototypes

Final classroom perspectives

Watch: Denver Botanic Gardens Children's Garden, Design-Build Studio →

Project Team

Spring 2017 | ENVD 3300-030

Children's Playscape

Client: Northeast Denver Housing Center

Students designed and constructed a play environment for an affordable housing community in West Denver, beginning with interviews and design workshops involving residents and children so the work was grounded in the needs of the community rather than an assumed program. Proposals were evaluated through four connected criteria: lasting play value, buildability, aesthetic quality, and safety. The completed environment combines climbing, sliding, swinging, balancing, and open-ended play within a shared landscape, intended by the client to serve as a prototype for future playgrounds within affordable housing developments across Denver.

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Community design presentation

Collaborative construction team

Timber structure construction

Playscape site plan

Completed community playscape

Completed climbing structure

Completed slide structure

Children using climbing structure

Community ribbon cutting

Project Team

Press, Modern in Denver

"The enthusiasm, the gratitude and the sense of comfort were palpable."

Denver Botanic Gardens client | Modern in Denver, Winter 2018

"Every decision has a dollar and cent value attached to it." Jeremy Ehly, quoted in Modern in Denver, Winter 2018. "The most important thing I learned on the project was attention to detail." Anonymous student lead, quoted in Modern in Denver, Winter 2018.

Student Experience

“This class is challenging and very interesting and I was very pleased with the learning experience. This was by far the best studio class in terms of guidance and learning and work.”

Design-Build Studios | Spring 2018 course evaluation