March 25, 2025

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CHICAGO - Architecture students spend plenty of time in the studio, but it’s rare for them to see their designs spring into life.

Thanks to grants from the AISC Education Foundation, four classes of university students will get a chance to bring their designs into the real world! They are all part of a design-build studio where they will design and help fabricate steel by collaborating with fabricators, engineers, and community and campus leaders.

"Design-build studios are taught in many architecture schools, but they focus on wood construction and the logistics are difficult," said AISC Architecture Education Manager Jeanne Homer, who taught architecture at Oklahoma State University for almost two decades. "We are providing them the rare opportunity to work with steel and interact directly with fabricators. Going through the whole process gives students a unique insight into how materials behave in the real world--a definite advantage when they are designing."

The four projects receiving 2025 Steel Design-Build Grants represent a variety of scales in prominent locations. All of these projects will involve architecture students’ hands-on experience with structural steel.

The Huckabee College of Architecture at Texas Tech University will receive $20,000 for the Downtown Arts Gateway in Lubbock, Texas. The gateway, led by Professor Peter Raab and Assistant Professor Erin Hunt, will be a symbol of the integration of art, design, and technology as well as provide needed shading and seating. The design will focus on sustainable design reflecting the community’s identity, accomplished through features such as evaporative cooling and ecological vegetation integration.

Brian Lee of Kansas State University will receive two $10,000 grants for two builds to be completed in 2026 and 2027. These will be small structural steel pavilions on campus in Manhattan, Kansas. The students will be exploring a no-waste process of designing and cutting steel sheets.

Armando Araiza’s students at University of Texas at San Antonio will also be building a small alcove pavilion located at the entrance to the School of Architecture and Planning at the downtown campus. They will receive $15,000 to build one pavilion, experimenting with prototypes as part of their design process that will bridge the gap between digital design and construction.

The AISC Education Foundation would like to thank this year’s Design-Build Grant Program jury: University of Kansas/Studio 804’s Dan Rockhill, California Polytechnic State University’s Dale Clifford, and AISC-member Hillsdale Fabricators’ Tony Diebold.