Back in the 1960s, author Ken Kesey, Beat poet Neal Cassady, and the Merry Pranksters were on a “psychedelic journey” that shook up mainstream culture when they traveled cross-country in their painted bus named “Furthur.” Last year, Hank Butitta had an altogether different mission in mind when he purchased a school bus on Craigslist for $3000.

Butitta was embarking on the final year of his Masters of Architecture degree in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota. He’d convert the bus into a living space, he decided, for his Masters Final Project. It was an unorthodox approach to say the least, as most final projects are conceptual works on paper, sometimes with models.

“I wanted to make an object for my thesis,” he says. “I was tired of drawing buildings that would never exist, for clients that were imaginary, and with details I didn’t fully understand.” He’d already investigated the possibility of converting a bus into a cabin on wheels, which he intended to park on his grandfather’s property in Wisconsin. So at the U, during a studio focused on full-scale prototyping, Butitta asked his instructor whether he could “take it to the extreme. I showed him a picture of the bus. He said I was nuts, but go for it.”

After 15 weeks, by the end of the semester, Butitta had largely completed the bus’s transformation. “My instructors really pushed and challenged me architecturally, which didn’t affect my design much, but did affect how I understood the project,” he says. “I soon realized I didn’t just want a cabin. I wanted to explore designing something even more real and practical.”

The project “became for me, more than anything, about expanding the parameters of architectural education,” Butitta says. The bus, parked behind Rapson Hall, became a talking point “for intellectual conversations about the value of working within a budget, with recycled materials and the like.”

Shortly after graduation, Butitta took the bus on the road—on a 5,000-mile trip out West, to be exact—with his own merry band of friends. They included his brother Vince Butitta (a biologist who contributed significant sweat equity to the bus build out) and Justin Evidon (a photographer and videographer who documented the trip with Hank on the blog hankboughtabus.org). Hank's college roomates and two additional friends were also on board.

Butitta considered the trip an extension of his thesis, a chance to incorporate a few more conveniences into the tiny house on wheels, and a test run for the project in action. As he says, “It’s been a blast!”

15 weeks: Go!

Butitta started by ripping out the old seats and repairing the rusted floor, “which really helped me learn about the structure of the bus and get a feel for the space,” he says. He then covered the floor with insulation and sheets of reclaimed basketball-court flooring, which he found at Siwek Lumber and Millwork in Northeast Minneapolis. “That place is like the Ax-Man of lumberyards,” he says. “You never know what they have there.”

After the floor was done, he focused on the window bays as a unit or module for building out the bus. “I spent weeks prototyping one bay, building it, figuring out how it would hold lighting and translucent window panels,” he says. Vince visited and the brothers spent 14-hour days, for two weeks, constructing the walls and ceiling.

Butitta had already prepared all the digital files for the furniture, so he "cut the pieces out with a CNC router, then assembled and mounted the furniture.” LED strip lights were installed. “And that’s where the bus was by the end of the semester,” he says. “We didn’t have toilets, plumbing, or outlets, but there was enough to get a feel for the space and talk about the process.”

The clean modern design of the 25-foot-long interior includes built-in beds with storage beneath and at the ends, tables and seating, and space for a small kitchen and bathroom. After graduation, Vince again visited and helped Hank finish up the window panels, install electrical outlets, build privacy screens, and place a portable toilet in a bathroom cubby. They also hooked up water jugs for a foot-pump sink for washing hands and dishes.

Golf-cart batteries power the electrical system ("We can go several days on a charge," he says). With the additions, he says, “We had everything we needed for life on the road.” And the media promptly followed. To date, publications from the New York Daily News and Tiny House Design to Le Figaro (France), TJOCK (Sweden), BimBon (Brazil), and Mako Living (Israel) have celebrated the project.

Butitta invested about $6000 in improvements in the bus, which he says is less than a house down payment and less than the tuition he paid for his last semester of grad school. The bus still needs a heating system, a cooktop and refrigerator, and plumbing. “It’s never going to be finished!” Butitta says, with a hearty, only slightly exasperated laugh.

But that hasn’t stopped the attention the bus continues to draw. “People are interested in the bus simply because it exists,” Butitta says. “They love the idea that a student made something; that I didn’t just have an idea about a bus as a home, but actually made it.”

Making, entrepreneurship, and education

Today the bus resides in an industrial park where Butitta has a studio and is slowly growing his business. He has a CNC router, and works on projects ranging from building custom furniture to machining molds for commercial glass blowers. The leftover gym flooring could end up as coffee tables. In the near future, Butitta hopes to set up shop with several other architecture graduates.

“Building the bus, and all the attention the bus has gotten, has shown me how valuable it is to do, to make, to pursue and follow through on an idea,” Butitta says. “The bus really hits on something people love to grab onto, which shows there’s not enough making coming from architecture schools.”

Butitta believes it’s “important for young designers to pursue making while engaged in problem solving,” he adds. “And with the rise of digital fabrication, there are lots of opportunities for people to have ideas and pursue them, and to expand the entrepreneurial spirit in architecture.”

Butitta’s bus is a full-scale working manifestation of that spirit. The bus has not only shifted Butitta's ideas about architectural education, but altered his instructors’ and fellow students’ notions of making in education, as well. Case in point: “The first year I started, the school had a CNC machine that sat unused,” Butitta says. “Now, it’s always busy. Students are making full-scale objects all the time!”