John Rex Charter School, Oklahoma City, OK
Construction Completed: June 2024

Pollinator gardens and food cultivation plots extend ecological learning beyond the greenhouse, linking design and stewardship through daily observation.

The Urban Learning Greenhouse reimagines a vacant urban corner of the John Rex Charter School campus as a civic classroom for environmental education, agriculture, and design literacy. Developed through an interdisciplinary collaboration between the University of Oklahoma’s Architecture and Construction Science programs, the project connects computation, fabrication, and community engagement through a two-semester design-build process.

The 1,020-square-foot structure is both a greenhouse and an educational hub. Its lightweight modular framework, transparent polycarbonate cladding, and layered structure create a daylight-filled space for teaching horticulture and environmental systems. Beyond its role as a community resource, the project serves as a testbed for interdisciplinary pedagogy—linking academic research, digital fabrication, and public impact through built work.

Pedagogical Highlights

• Interdisciplinary Design-Build Pedagogy:
  Established a fully integrated workflow between Architecture and Construction Science programs, allowing students to collaborate across disciplines through every phase of research, design, fabrication, and construction.

• Applied Research in Digital Fabrication:
  Advanced a faculty-led research agenda in CNC-milled plywood assemblies and modular digital-to-analog workflows, translating computational design methods directly into scalable, real-world construction.

• Ecological Literacy Through Design:
  Positioned architecture as an educational interface between built form and ecology, linking greenhouse design to lessons in sustainability, pollination, food systems, and environmental stewardship.

• Professional Practice Simulation:
  Structured as a two-semester, full-scale studio replicating the professional project delivery process—integrating documentation, scheduling, budgeting, permitting, and client communication into the curriculum.

• Community-Based Learning and Impact:
  Developed in direct collaboration with John Rex Charter School educators and students, the project reinforced civic engagement as a core competency of architectural education and established a replicable model for community-centered design-build practice.

Occupying an underutilized edge of the John Rex campus, the greenhouse transforms an overlooked patch of land into an active site of ecological engagement. Early site research addressed solar gain, urban water flow, and circulation, ensuring the greenhouse performed as an integrated component of the school’s landscape. The design merges architecture with agricultural systems, framing the act of cultivation as both ecological and pedagogical.

Developed in direct dialogue with school administrators and teachers, the project integrates raised beds, pollinator gardens, and outdoor learning stations to support hands-on environmental education. The site plan encourages movement between interior and exterior learning spaces, turning the greenhouse into a living curriculum—an evolving classroom where students can see environmental systems at work.

Early survey work identified environmental conditions—sun path, vegetation, and drainage—guiding the greenhouse’s final placement and form.

The design process was anchored by stakeholder collaboration and iterative engagement. Faculty and students conducted participatory workshops with educators and administrators to align architectural design with curriculum goals. These conversations informed the project’s flexible programming—accommodating lessons in botany, sustainability, and nutrition—while reinforcing its accessibility as a shared community asset.

Through this process, the design-build team developed a deeper understanding of how architecture functions as a facilitator of learning. The project not only generated a physical greenhouse but also cultivated a framework for interdisciplinary collaboration, empathy, and civic engagement. Each design decision—from spatial organization to construction sequencing—was informed by both environmental logic and the lived experiences of the students and teachers who would occupy the space.

Design development combined pollinator-friendly planting research with classroom engagement to align ecological goals with educational programming.

Structured as a full-scale design-build studio, the project mirrored professional workflows. The fall semester focused on site research, conceptual design, and prototyping, while the spring semester transitioned to construction management and on-site fabrication. Architecture students coordinated digital design and documentation; Construction Science students led field operations and assembly.

This collaboration required the team to operate across disciplines, integrating scheduling, budgeting, and fabrication sequencing into a unified workflow. Faculty oversight emphasized leadership, accountability, and reflection as educational outcomes, ensuring that process and product held equal weight. Through this framework, students experienced the project not as a simulation of practice, but as practice itself.

Architecture and construction science students collaborate during early site preparation, linking classroom research to real-world construction processes.

Students used Rhino, Grasshopper, RhinoCAM, and Revit to generate parametric models, toolpaths, and construction documents. CNC-milled plywood, CNC-plasma-cut steel, and modular polycarbonate assemblies were fabricated and constructed by the team.

The greenhouse’s modular framework relied on a system of integral interlocking structural components. CNC precision enabled sub-millimeter tolerances, giving students firsthand experience with digital accuracy, craftsmanship, and material logic. This precision allowed assemblies to slot cleanly without field adjustments, reinforcing lessons in design intent, structural performance, and execution.

Students translate parametric models into CNC-milled plywood and modular polycarbonate components, aligning computational precision with material craft.

Connection details, fabrication workflows, and prototyping required students to iterate and refine modular assemblies and details. This process fostered problem-solving, adaptability, and collaboration. Peer critique assessed teamwork as students reconciled tolerances, sequencing, and assembly logic.

Parametric models embedding constructibility and connectivity, guiding CNC-milled components and modular assemblies optimized for precision and on-site efficiency.

Material strategies for the Urban Learning Greenhouse were guided by a systems-thinking framework emphasizing modularity, efficiency, and environmental responsiveness. The building was conceived as a network of interdependent systems—structure, enclosure, and landscape—each calibrated to influence performance and assembly. Structural rhythm aligned with material module size, joinery precision reinforced fabrication efficiency, and cladding transparency supported daylighting and thermal control.

Students coordinated structure, fabrication, and construction as an integrated loop between digital modeling and field application. CNC-milled plywood ribs, translucent polycarbonate, and steel joinery were designed to function as adaptive systems rather than discrete parts, balancing environmental performance with tectonic clarity. Evaluation prioritized the synthesis of modeling and construction, reduction of material waste, and the performance of assemblies as responsive ecological infrastructure—demonstrating that systemic thinking can transform design-build projects into living, adaptive frameworks for sustainability.

Students evaluate fabrication optimization, modular assemblies and connection details, reinforcing systems thinking as economy, material, assembly, and structure, inform one another.

On-site construction became a living classroom for collaboration and management. Students led daily operations including sequencing, quality control, and safety coordination, gaining first-hand experience in field management and problem-solving. Faculty guidance emphasized adaptability, requiring the team to respond to site conditions, weather shifts, and logistical challenges in real time.

By bridging digital precision with manual assembly, the project demonstrated how design-build education cultivates both technical fluency and leadership. Students experienced the full project arc—designing, fabricating, and building an environment that will serve the community long after their semester ended.

Students managed scheduling, budgeting, and field coordination, translating classroom planning into real-time construction leadership.

Students from architecture and construction science worked side by side through every phase of the Urban Learning Greenhouse—from research and design to fabrication and field assembly. The course framework emphasized shared responsibility over disciplinary hierarchy, requiring participants to understand the interconnectedness of design intent, digital modeling, material performance, and construction management. Architecture students contributed modeling and detailing expertise, while Construction Science students led scheduling, cost analysis, and field coordination. The overlap between these roles created an environment where collaboration functioned as both a design process and a professional skill.

Team learning was reinforced through peer assessment, documentation, and cross-disciplinary communication exercises emphasizing clarity, adaptability, and mutual respect. Instead of dividing work along conventional lines, students engaged directly with each other’s knowledge, developing a shared vocabulary for design and construction. Faculty evaluation prioritized leadership, communication, and problem-solving as measurable indicators of success, reinforcing teamwork as a critical and transferable learning outcome.

Students assemble and raise the frame, aligning prefabricated components with precision learned through digital modeling and precision fabrication methods.

The Urban Learning Greenhouse marks a key moment in OU’s evolving Design+Build pedagogy. It unites research, computation, and construction within a real-world framework that demonstrates architecture’s capacity to serve communities while advancing academic inquiry.

Through its synthesis of interdisciplinary education, digital fabrication, and civic engagement, the project stands as both artifact and methodology—a built testament to the idea that architecture’s most enduring lessons emerge not from drawings alone, but from the shared act of making.

From university student builders to elementary learners, the ribbon-cutting ceremony with Oklahoma City leaders and the mayor celebrated a collective investment in design, ecology, and education.

© Ken Marold USA, Inc. All rights reserved.

Oklahoma City, OK
Construction Completed: May 2023

The Crutcho Elementary Greenhouse Classroom was designed and built as a pre–American School Design Build project in collaboration with Engage Learning. The initiative provided Crutcho students with a hands-on agricultural learning environment while also serving as a proof-of-concept for new design-to-construction pedagogy at Gibbs College. Unlike later ASDB projects that integrated architecture and construction science, this effort involved construction science students only. I led the project’s digital workflow, developing the cassette-based system, parametric models, and CNC toolpaths that transformed design intent into buildable components.

In many ways, this project was more than a greenhouse—it became a testing ground for how digital design and prefabrication could serve as educational tools. By linking CNC fabrication directly to student construction, the project generated insights that informed later curriculum, learning outcomes, and pedagogical strategies. It demonstrated how modular design, community engagement, and hands-on building could be scaled into a broader educational model, helping to shape the eventual creation of the American School Design Build studio.

Oklahoma City, OK
Construction Completed: May 2023

The Crutcho Elementary Greenhouse Classroom was developed as an applied research and pedagogical initiative that explored the intersection of parametric design, digital fabrication, and design-build construction. The project was realized in collaboration with Engage Learning and Crutcho Public Schools in Oklahoma City, an under-resourced district committed to hands-on, STEAM-based education. The greenhouse was envisioned as both an agricultural learning environment and a pedagogical experiment—an opportunity to merge architectural fabrication research with construction science education.

Operating under a hybrid pedagogy model, the project divided responsibilities between design/fabrication and on-site assembly. The design, digital modeling, detailing, fabrication, and analysis were conducted within the Gibbs College of Architecture as part of ongoing research into computational design and modular systems. The final construction was completed by a team of University of Oklahoma Construction Science students, who assembled the prefabricated components on a pier and pressure-treated foundation platform built on site. This collaboration created a full-scale learning experience that linked research-based fabrication with the pragmatism of field construction, testing new methods for cross-disciplinary integration within Gibbs College.

ABOVE: The anatomy of a single ‘cassette’ module, nested in a 4’x8’x.75″ plywwod sheet, ready for milling

RIGHT: Exploded cassette diagram shows horizontal repetition and vertical differentiation. When assembled each modular unit row ‘tooths’ into the previous installed row below it which forms a robust structural shell when full assembled.

As a research endeavor, the project investigated how computational modeling and CNC fabrication could produce modular assemblies optimized for rapid field construction. The design prioritized tectonic clarity and modular logic, using a plywood cassette system that integrated structure, enclosure, and built-in furniture. Each wall and floor module was digitally modeled and fabricated, designed to slot together in a sequence that mirrored the logic of a kit-of-parts assembly.

This workflow allowed the greenhouse to function as both a building and a system—each cassette serving multiple roles as structure, storage, and workspace, collectively forming a coherent architectural language. The design also addressed the educational mission of the site: durable, adaptable, and easy to maintain, the greenhouse supported student-led horticulture and environmental learning. The result was a demonstration of how fabrication research could yield a spatial framework that is both functional and pedagogically resonant.

RIGHT: Testing precision-milled plywood cassettes, staged during fabrication, each unit interlocking and auto-aligning like LEGO bricks to form the greenhouse’s modular framework.

The fabrication process was grounded in advanced parametric modeling and CNC workflows emphasizing adaptability and precision. Working in Rhino and RhinoCAM, each cassette was digitally nested, milled, and labeled for efficient sequencing and field assembly. The fabrication logic integrated notching, slotting, and “drawer-box-like” interlocking joinery strategies for each ‘cassette’ module resulting in superior joint strength, precision alignment, and repeatability. Fabricated from ¾-inch plywood, every joint was tested and refined to balance friction fit, alignment, and structural performance.

Once fabrication was complete, the prefabricated wall and floor cassettes were organized, labeled, and delivered to the Crutcho site with a detailed set of assembly instructions. The Construction Science team constructed the pier foundation and then assembled the modules in the field. This handoff between fabrication research and on-site construction established a workflow that mirrored professional design-build coordination, connecting computational precision to logistical execution that exceeded typical real-world tolerances achicved by the most skilled professional trades.

ABOVE: Construction science students assembling cassette modules on site, gaining first-hand experience in modular sequencing and field installation.

The Crutcho Elementary Greenhouse Classroom tested a new model for interdisciplinary collaboration at the University of Oklahoma, joining faculty-led fabrication research with Construction Science education. The project provided a controlled setting for testing fabrication workflows and field sequencing, generating data about tolerance behavior, assembly order, and communication between digital and physical systems.

For Construction Science students, the experience offered direct engagement with digital fabrication in a field context, strengthening skills in sequencing, leadership, and precision installation. For fabrication research, the project produced a replicable framework for small-scale modular construction, demonstrating how academic research can yield design systems adaptable to a range of educational and civic uses. The greenhouse thus became both a teaching tool and a research artifact—a physical outcome of pedagogical experimentation.

ABOVE: Students erecting CNC-fabricated cassette floors and walls. Collaborative construction in progress, with students working through sequencing, tolerances, and teamwork to bring speculative details into reality.

The greenhouse was designed and built for Crutcho Public Schools, a district serving one of the most economically challenged communities in Oklahoma. Beyond its architectural value, the structure functions as a year-round educational environment supporting the school’s curriculum in horticulture, sustainability, and environmental science. Its clarity and material durability allow it to operate as both classroom and laboratory, fostering hands-on learning and environmental literacy.

As reported by local media, the project was recognized as a model for university–community partnership and a precedent for future design-build engagement. It expanded on earlier greenhouse prototypes and became a bridge toward more complex faculty-led research, including the fully integrated John Rex Urban Learning Greenhouse completed the following year. This project reaffirmed the university’s mission of civic collaboration, demonstrating that fabrication research can act as a catalyst for educational equity and community engagement.

The Crutcho Elementary Greenhouse Classroom remains a pivotal early project in the evolution of Gibbs College’s design-build pedagogy. It established a new hybrid model that merged digital fabrication research with construction science education, balancing computational precision with the coordination required for on-site assembly. The project proved that the success of fabrication research depends as much on collaboration and communication as it does on technical execution.

More broadly, the greenhouse demonstrated how small-scale architecture can achieve disproportionate social and institutional impact. By combining research and service, the project redefined how architectural education can engage the public realm—showing that innovation in digital design can directly contribute to environmental learning, community resilience, and pedagogical advancement.

ABOVE: Team portrait of construction science students, in front of the finished Crutcho Greenhouse Classroom, completed in one semester as a proof-of-concept for future ASDB pedagogy.

ABOVE: Exterior assembly of the Crutcho Greenhouse Classroom, where CNC-milled plywood cassettes were enclosed with dual-layer polycarbonate to create a year-round grow lab.

© Ken Marold USA, Inc. All rights reserved.

Norman, OK

Status : Design On-going

Prairie Slider is a small-scale architectural framework designed for restorative solitude, communal gathering, and adaptable use. Conceived through collaboration between architect and builder, the structure operates as a hybrid enclosure — part greenhouse, part studio, part retreat. Its minimal footprint and crafted detailing allow it to function across diverse contexts while establishing a lasting presence within the prairie landscape.

Norman, OK

Status : On-going

Prairie Slider is a small-scale architectural framework designed for restorative solitude, communal gathering, and adaptable use. Conceived through collaboration between architect and builder, the structure operates as a hybrid enclosure — part greenhouse, part studio, part retreat. Its minimal footprint and crafted detailing allow it to function across diverse contexts while establishing a lasting presence within the prairie landscape.

Spatial Configuration
The design is organized around a simple rectangular footprint and a single-pitch roof that mediates light and frames expansive views of the surrounding site. Built entirely as a post-and-beam system, the frame uses dimensional lumber articulated with exposed steel connectors and turnbuckles. This construction logic makes the structural rhythm legible and expressive, aligning with the project’s ethos of openness, functionality, and honesty.

Internally, the space is defined by a single volume animated by shifting light and vegetation. Translucent polycarbonate panels admit diffuse daylight while providing weather resistance and UV protection. Seasonal and diurnal changes transform the quality of interior light, creating zones of warmth, shadow, and brightness. The rhythm of timber framing and diagonal bracing generates a spatial cadence reminiscent of both vernacular barns and modern greenhouse typologies.

Material Strategy
The enclosure is clad in quadruple-wall polycarbonate sheeting, offering insulation, weather resistance, and graduated translucency. This system balances thermal performance with privacy while maintaining a subtle visual connection to the exterior landscape. Precision-fabricated steel plates, brackets, and tensioning systems reinforce the timber frame while also functioning as visible details that highlight the logic of assembly. Collectively, these material strategies underscore durability, craft, and clarity.

Use and Adaptability
The structure is intentionally open-ended in program. It can function as a greenhouse, meditation space, reading room, art studio, or small gathering place. Operable sliding panels and doors allow for ventilation and seasonal adaptation, ensuring that the building remains responsive to changing weather and user needs. Its durability and modular framing system support longevity while leaving room for personalization.

Context and Landscape
Sited within a prairie ecosystem, the building rests lightly on a timber platform that defines a threshold between cultivated wildness and constructed shelter. The surrounding vegetation — native grasses, pollinator plants, and seasonal blooms — plays an active role in shaping the atmosphere of the interior, filtering light and softening views. From within, the space becomes both a lens onto the prairie and a refuge within it, creating an experience grounded equally in architecture and ecology.

Conclusion
Prairie Slider is an exploration of simplicity, adaptability, and presence. By combining vernacular references with precision detailing, the project establishes a framework for connection — between people, landscape, and light. It offers not only a crafted architectural object but also an invitation to inhabit the prairie differently: slower, more attentively, and with renewed appreciation for the relationship between shelter and environment.

© Ken Marold USA, Inc. All rights reserved.

Oklahoma City, OK
Construction Completed: May 2022

This greenhouse was designed as a purpose-built, utilitarian enclosure to support seasonal plant cultivation and community food production. The structure prioritizes function, economy, and environmental responsiveness, utilizing a restrained palette of raw materials assembled with precision and clarity. Built primarily from off-the-shelf dimensional cedar, mild steel, and translucent polycarbonate cladding, the project reflects a straightforward yet deliberate construction methodology rooted in making with intent.

Oklahoma City, OK
Construction Completed: May 2022

This greenhouse was designed as a purpose-built, utilitarian enclosure to support seasonal plant cultivation and community food production. The structure prioritizes function, economy, and environmental responsiveness, utilizing a restrained palette of raw materials assembled with precision and clarity. Built primarily from off-the-shelf dimensional cedar, mild steel, and translucent polycarbonate cladding, the project reflects a straightforward yet deliberate construction methodology rooted in making with intent.

The primary frame is composed of cedar 2x lumber, selected for its resistance to rot and insects and its workability with basic tools. All joints are reinforced using custom-fabricated mild steel plates and brackets, plasma-cut and welded to support the unique geometries of the sloped roof and wall intersections. These connections remain exposed, expressing the joint logic and construction process. Steel plates serve a dual role, providing structural reinforcement while creating a visual rhythm and point of visual interest along the frame.

A continuous rafter system, spaced and aligned with agricultural efficiency, establishes the greenhouse’s distinctive sloped roof profile, maximizing solar gain while efficiently shedding rain. The enclosure is clad in celluar, UV-stabilized polycarbonate sheeting, installed as a continuous surface from base to ridge. The translucent panels diffuse light evenly throughout the interior while maintaining thermal insulation and weather protection. At full height, the walls allow for flexible growing arrangements and passive ventilation strategies.

Cedar framing and translucent polycarbonate cladding establish the greenhouse’s distinctive light-filled interior. Exposed steel plates and joints reveal the structural logic and craft of construction, while precision alignment of rafters and panels ensures optimal solar gain, ventilation, and material efficiency.

Every element of the project was designed for clarity and repeatability. The detailing is intentionally minimal: the steel hardware is unpainted, allowing it to patina naturally; the cedar is left unfinished to age in response to its environment. A continuous base sill provides a moisture break, while raised floor beds and integrated cross bracing ensure long-term structural stability under wind load and shifting ground conditions.

The project’s approach was not to romanticize the greenhouse typology, but to reengage it through simple material means and tactical construction. There are no redundant formal gestures, only what is needed to create a protected, light-filled volume that supports both growth and maintenance. Doors and vents are sized for access and airflow; diagonal bracing doubles as shelving supports; and all components are assembled with basic tools and hardware, allowing for future repair or modification without specialized labor.

ABOVE: Construction process of the Mark Twain Elementary Greenhouse, showing the assembly of its cedar frame, custom-fabricated steel connections, and translucent polycarbonate cladding. The images document the project’s progression from digital-to-physical translation through hands-on fabrication, where precision detailing, joinery testing, and material craftsmanship merge to create a durable and light-filled educational environment.

This project exemplifies a form-follows-function approach tailored to localized needs and material availability. The result is a refined agricultural infrastructure, unembellished yet intentional, modest in scale yet highly resolved. It operates as a working structure: easy to build, easy to maintain, and always engaged in the process of cultivation.

ABOVE: Completed Crutcho Elementary Greenhouse Classroom, showing the cedar and polycarbonate structure designed for year-round agricultural learning. The sloped roof and translucent cladding balance daylighting, insulation, and durability, embodying a pragmatic yet elegant early model of a pedagogical educational design-build practice for the future American School Design Build program at OU Gibbs.

© Ken Marold USA, Inc. All rights reserved.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

type: graduate studio project
completed: 2006

Design 4: Structure and Form investigates the relationship between material, structure, and spatial organization as a framework for architectural design. Students explore how geometry, construction logic, and environmental context shape architectural experience. The studio challenges students to move fluidly between conceptual design and tectonic resolution, translating abstract ideas into constructible form.

Through iterative modeling, drawing, and fabrication, students analyze how structure can both define and transform spatial character. Emphasis is placed on clarity of intent, precision of craft, and the ability to communicate architectural systems through visual and material expression. By connecting design research to real-world conditions, Design 4 cultivates a rigorous understanding of how architecture is made—how ideas become space, and how structure drives form.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

type: graduate studio project
completed: 2006

The National Institute of Flamenco, previously housed in a repurposed auto garage in Albuquerque, sought a vibrant new identity when it acquired a corner site adjacent to Old Town’s Santa Fe Plaza in 2006. This significant location demanded an architectural response that not only respected but invigorated its urban surroundings.

Responding to these needs, the institute’s new design dramatically expands its facilities to encompass additional performance areas, music spaces, and multimedia/digital choreography studios. Central to the institute’s mission is a cafe and club space with a small sound stage that extends a welcoming gesture towards the bustling public plaza.

Integral to the architectural concept is the theme of “duende flamenco,” the deeply emotive and expressive spirit found in flamenco’s poetry and performance. The building’s cleaved plan symbolizes a pierced heart, a vivid metaphor for the emotional intensity of flamenco. This design not only embodies the art form’s passionate roots but also maintains strong connections to the surrounding urban fabric.

Designed with porosity in mind, the structure invites passersby into public and semi-private spaces, fostering interaction between visitors and artists. Embracing and evolving the traditional Spanish-Pueblo style, the architecture employs familiar regional forms integrated with advanced building technologies and a local tectonic language.

This hybrid approach ensures the new National Institute of Flamenco captures both contemporary expressive freedoms and deeply rooted cultural traditions, making it a significant landmark that celebrates artistic performance and community engagement in the heart of Santa Fe.

© Ken Marold USA, Inc. All rights reserved.