For more than 30 years, the University of Houston Graduate Design/Build Studio has designed and constructed outdoor shade structures for area non-profit organizations site-specific solutions to climate-influenced building problems. By offering its Master of Architecture students the opportunity to see their ideas evolve from initial conception to completed construction, the studio demonstrates the full-scale implications of the students’ aspirations and measures the quality of their design thinking against the rigorous standard of built reality. This studio’s 2022 project, the Inside | Out classroom provides the architecture students foundational instruction in urban and site design, sustainable design and building, building materials and assemblies, design collaboration, and community development while also providing a permanent benefit to the Frank Black Middle School learning community.

The Inside | Out classroom, positioned on the lush tree-filled campus of O’Neil Ford-designed Frank Black Middle School, incorporates active environmental design to promote learning in an outdoor setting. As a launchpad for small self-directed student groups, it enhances environmental learning within the school’s Vanguard Magnet Program. With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending that students and educators receive as much fresh air as possible, outdoor classrooms are an easy and cost-effective way to offer better air quality. The initiative for integrating outdoor learning is no longer simply a response to the pandemic lifestyle but is a long-term solution that provides benefits on student mental health and academic performance. This classroom will continue to prove that students often display calmer dispositions and can better focus when learning in nature.

The classroom’s complex geometry with sparse materiality fuses together the existing campus outdoor features consisting of a frog pond, pond deck, pergola, and sustainable garden. The featured butterfly roof funnels rainwater to a 1,200-gallon water tank while offering thermal comfort by minimizing solar heat gain and by maximizing naturally occurring cooling breezes.

To keep this unique outdoor classroom standing strong, hot-dip galvanizing was chosen because of its ability to provide corrosion protection, aesthetics and sustainable features that other paint methods would not offer. The service was performed free of charge to the client, further proving the galvanizer’s commitment to the community and continued education of students in the program. The custom fabricated steel columns, floor and roof beams, purlins, trusses, animal screens and slate chalkboard frames were galvanized to last many years down the road with minimal to no maintenance in the structure’s future.

Students and the neighboring Oak Forest community will see and experience the benefits of the integrating environmental performance and sustainable ecological practices as demonstrated through the design and construction of the durable outdoor classroom structure. Its material palette of exposed structural steel protected by hot-dip galvanizing complements the natural setting and allows the project to serve its community for decades.