Architecture students are currently working on a project to affect practical change in the St. Louis community.

The Washington University Design Build Studio is landscaping the grounds surrounding Patrick Henry Downtown Academy, a St. Louis elementary school.

The participating students hope to provide the children attending the academy with an open outdoor recreational area for the next school year.

“We decided it needed to be a little more than just a garden—right now…they play on asphalt and have a very limited recess because they have no place to play,” said senior David Adkin, one of the architecture students working on the project.

The group, consisting of architecture students and several students in the College of Arts & Sciences, started to look into the project last semester and began designing the project this spring. Their original plan was to build a garden and greenhouse in the back of the school.

Half of the group’s $15,000 budget came as a grant from the Skandalaris Center, and an anonymous donor provided the rest of the money.

The group decided to expand on its designs following donations of construction resources.

The group then traveled downtown to ask students what they would like to see in their school’s backyard and formulated a multi-part plan for their design.

The final design includes the original garden, as well as an outdoor classroom, a large outdoor field for playing sports and an active play area that includes a natural playground.

“The community has been extremely receptive in donating a lot more than we would have ever thought was possible, and we can do more than we would have ever thought we could do. It changed the scope of the project drastically,” Adkin said.

According to Adkin, this is an unusual project for undergraduate students in the architecture school—design and build studios are typically reserved for graduate students.

He said that the project has proved a valuable and rare educational tool for the students involved.

“A lot of the time when you design, you don’t think about the real life issues and how things will get constructed and the budget and all the details of how things get made.…It really helped us to actually deal with the real life things,” Adkin said.

Some sudents who were not involved in the project think it is an effective way for architecture students to give back to the community.

“It’s a cool way to use what they’ve learned and give back to St. Louis,” freshman Roxanne Glazier said.

A blog of the group’s progress can be accessed at www.learninglandscape-wuph.blogspot.com

With additional reporting by Becky Prager