Recent News

MODEL SHOP'S 'GREEN' EFFORTS STRENGTHENED BY NEW SOLAR KILN

NORMAN — As another shipment of tree trunks arrive, the saw mill at the University of Oklahoma College of Architecture Model Shop fires up. Nick Thomas and his student assistant prepare the wood, cutting it into slabs for the students to use in the future. These trees in particular were harvested from a row of trees on the University of Oklahoma south campus. Nick Thomas, director of the Model Shop, explained that these trees dated back to the Dust Bowl and were planted as a result of a program of the New Deal. The trees have come from a construction site and would have gone to waste.

The Model Shop at the College of Architecture is committed to building green, whether it’s designing sustainable buildings or making use of local resources. The college is practicing the green initiative in their Model Shop, which is open to all students in the College of Architecture. The shop uses locally harvested wood and recycled materials for their storage buildings as well as a solar kiln to dry wood used by the students, keeping the consumption of fossil fuels to a minimum.

The sustainability efforts, according to Thomas, start from the very beginning. “We get the trees that have gone down for various natural reasons. If we didn’t use these trees, they’d either go to the wood chipper or the landfills.”

All wood donated to the Model Shop is produced locally. The trees currently being used had lived their life cycle and were donated to the shop by the university. The wood is then cut by staff and stored and dried in a wood-drying shed, which is made completely out of recycled materials. The drying shed enables air to circulate naturally and dry the wood. Most hard woods air dry in the shop environment at the rate of one inch per year. The College of Architecture’s recently completed solar kiln dries the wood to about 6 percent moisture content in a fraction of the time using Oklahoma’s naturally occurring intense heat.

The solar kiln was designed and constructed as the part of Marjorie Callahan’s “Architecture Green” class project. It is designed to be a sustainable way to quickly dry the wood used for the shop. The kiln requires very little attention and makes resources available faster for the students’ use. “The solar kiln is a contribution to the college and to society,” says Callahan.

Thomas explains that the “green” efforts aren’t only about environmental concerns, but also about cost effectiveness. “It ends up saving us money in the long run,” he says.

The Model Shop and the dedicated staff provide the students with the much-needed resources to design furniture and work on their class projects. A variety of straight-grain and figured walnut, pecan, sycamore, cypress, oak, maple, cedar and osage orange are available for students, faculty and staff for various departmental projects. Since 1999, the faculty at the Model Shop has helped students to prepare for and win major design competitions at the national level. For more information about the College of Architecture Model Shop, contact Nick Thomas at nthomas@ou.edu.