Dan Rockhill

Kansas Architect Reinvents Residential Prefab Housing Designs

Story by Pat Pollock : Photo by Dan Rockhill

Coincidence or destiny? When architecture professor Dan Rockhill moved to Kansas in 1980, he bought and remodeled a 1916 Sears, Roebuck and Company mail-order catalog farmhouse for his family. He never dreamed that more than two decades later he and his University of Kansas (KU) students would win a prestigious Home of the Year award from Architecture Magazine for the “Modular 1” prefab home they designed and built in 2003.

At KU, Rockhill founded and directs Studio 804. In this intense, five-month experience intended primarily for third-year graduate students, participants design and build an affordable home each year in Lawrence or Kansas City. All the building components are fabricated by students under Rockhill's direction. Winning the Architecture Magazine competition was an unprecedented honor because a student project had never before won a professional competition.

Dan Rockhill

Close-up: MArch '76
Home: Lawrence, KS
Married, three children
Interests: enjoying his grandchildren
(photo: Dan Rockhill)

Although the prefab concept for “Modular 1” received enormous attention, the teacher in Rockhill prefers to discuss how it was done.

“This is what differentiates our efforts from the vast majority of other programs,” Rockhill says. “What's unique is the fact that we [first Rockhill and Associates and then Studio 804] have been doing this for a long time and have become a poster child for bringing some building experience into architectural education.”

While working on his MArch degree at UB, Rockhill was always interested in building but felt somewhat out of place in the climate of architectural education. “[The late] professor Mike Brill encouraged me to write my thesis on design/build, something I have an interest in, have built my own practice around, and which propels the efforts of Studio 804 at KU.”

A just published book by Tuns Press, Designing & Building: Rockhill and Associates, which highlights his work, is edited by Brian Carter, dean of UB's School of Architecture and Planning. Carter reemphasizes Rockhill's philosophy: “By building these projects as well as designing them he has not only been able to stretch budgets and achieve high standards of workmanship but expand the design process to encourage experimentation, take in searches for new materials and consider the ingenious recycling of others.”

Although Rockhill humbly refers to his private practice, Rockhill and Associates, as a tiny firm working in a conservative state, his work receives national and worldwide recognition. A visionary architect whose range of projects includes both ends of the design spectrum, he not only stretches the limits of his imagination in contemporary residential concepts, but also has won a dozen awards for historic preservation work throughout Kansas.

The future holds even more challenges, including the possibility of creating a prefab manufacturing facility. Also in the works: informal consultation on post-hurricane reconstruction with Tulane University's architecture faculty.