From the Dream The Combine artist lecture to our second community engagement meeting, KCDC students have had a busy start to spring.

We welcomed Jennifer Newsom and Tom Carruthers of Dream The Combine to the KCDC on April 2nd for a guest lecture. They termed themselves ‘makers’ that are ‘partners in work and life, [they] create site specific installations exploring metaphor, imaginary environments, and perceptual uncertainties that cast doubt on our own understanding of the world’. Jennifer and Tom presented a number of projects and discussed the overlap in art, architecture, and cultural theory that their work exemplifies. They attempt to disrupt assumed dichotomies and manipulate the boundary between real and illusory space through this process. You can visit their website to check out more of their work.

With the design development phase of the Prospect Avenue Nodal Study nearing completion, students are striving to bring a level of detail to the project that can make the study both feasible and friendly on a more human scale. The KCDC students were joined by several design professionals for a review of their work last Monday. It was helpful to receive feedback from designers and professionals that had an outside perspective, and from this experience each group heard suggestions on what they were doing well and what needed to be pushed further or edited. The positive comments from the reviewers were encouraging as the students continue working on their designs.

Riding on the success of Monday’s review, the KCDC students prepared for the second community engagement meeting at the Gregg/Klice Community Center on Thursday. There was a great turnout of community members that were excited to learn about the student’s efforts. Many were concerned about the future of their neighborhoods, and the students were able to engage them in our design process. They shared their vision for the revitalization of the corridor and were passionate about seeing their community grow and prosper. This transparent communication was a great step in continuing to foster a partnership between the city and the local community as The KCDC strives to shape a positive future for Prospect Avenue.

“We must use the things we learn to change the ways we build our cities” were the final words of Dutch architect Matthijs Bouw at his lecture last Thursday. These were inspiring words for the audience and us, the students of the Kansas City Design Center, who hope to make a difference as we near graduation and enter the field of professional architects, landscape architects, and planners. We are lifelong learners in a world that is experiencing accelerated change, and we are ready for the endeavor of designing a society that works with the people and the environment.

The lecture Building Resilient Cities: Water as Leverage for a Better City examined the future survival of cities, particularly against extreme storms and sea level rise due to climate change. Bouw presented the unknowns of the changing climate and answered how humankind can adapt to this period of drastic change. Bouw explained that in his home country of the Netherlands— a country that is defined by its relationship to water— there was a period of time where the approach to this relationship was strictly to protect the city against water. This strategy included a series of costly dams and caused ecological devastation. Bouw saw the lesson in this and instead began to ask, what if we design and engineer structures that work with the water instead of against it? He called for designers to learn and invent different ways of building with nature. This concept of working with the natural force of water influenced BIG U, a collaborative project with One Architecture (Bouw’s firm), BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), and others. This project incorporates ten continuous miles of infrastructure that builds the coastal resilience of Lower Manhattan against rising sea levels and climate events while also connecting numerous diverse neighborhoods. The BIG U was designed in response to an initiative of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force and HUD, known as Rebuild by Design. The design prioritizes the city’s connection with the water, creates vibrant spaces for recreation, provides nature-based solutions for stormwater, and utilizes urban water storage. To see more about this project, check out this video. If you want to hear the full lecture given by Matthijs at the KC Public Library last week, you can listen here.

On Friday, we had the opportunity to hear Matthijs’ perspective and advice on our current project, Prospect Avenue Nodal Study, during a studio visit. He challenged us to think of flaws and employ them to ‘create ingredients for successful development’ as well as engage with the community— building their story and the story for our concept.

We were happy to have the opportunity to host Matthijs Bouw and attend his engaging lecture as well as receive attentive feedback on our project. We hope he enjoyed his visit to KC and his first experience of Arthur Bryants BBQ (he ordered the burnt end sandwich, by the way).

Despite the many snow days that everyone in the KC area has been experiencing, here at the KCDC (as Vladimir would say), ‘The project must continue’. We are now about a month and a half into the semester and as we move into week 7 we are gearing up for some exciting events!

Recently we have had a number of community engagement opportunities. We had our first experience inviting Community Leaders from the Prospect Avenue area to the KCDC to check out our project . The gallery style event allowed us to really get a sense of what those that live and work along Prospect Avenue see for the future of this prominent corridor. Many of them were a wealth of knowledge about what was needed, what had worked in the past, and the challenges that we may face as we look towards the future. We collected as much information and critique as we could from the community members and now begin to close the door on the conceptual stage of the design process.

We also had our first major design review last week and presented the conceptual stage of the project. We welcomed six design professionals to provide feedback on the project thus far. All four nodal groups (our two most southern groups— Prospect Hospital and Prospect South— have joined forces for a comprehensive approach to their zones) presented their overall concepts as well as preliminary design strategies for their respective nodes. You can see some of the presentation action below.

Looking forward:
As we continue working through the snow days and sub zero temps, we have even more exciting things coming up. Tonight the KCDC has partnered with K-State and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art to co-host a lecture with Fuensanta Nieto at 6:00pm. We also are very excited for our first off site community meeting that is happening tomorrow night (March 6th) at the East Patrol Police Station located at 2640 Prospect Ave. We are hoping to meet even more community members from the Prospect Ave area and work with them as we head into the design development stage of the project.