Getting started in KCK!

The Kansas City Design Center is excited to share the beginnings of the 2020-2021 school year! Our project is focusing on establishing a connection between Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, which are currently divided by the Kansas River, extensive rail yards and major rail ways, and a complex, interweaving system of interstates.  We are 12 students strong this year, connected virtually through a number of platforms that make it possible for us to be physically distant but socially and academically linked.  We come mainly from Kansas and Missouri, but we also have a colleague joining us from Arkansas!

            We are a month into the semester and have been working hard to identify and analyze site conditions, demographic trends, historical events, existing initiatives, and regulatory uses.  Generating these maps and diagrams, studying precedents, and visiting the site have kept us busy and focused.  Our site visit began at Kaw Point Park, where there is access to the river and a great view of downtown KCMO.  From there, we made several stops as we headed to the southern end of the site, including Strawberry Hill, the Riverfront Trail, and the Central Avenue bridge. 

Although many of us are from the Kansas City area, only few had been to and had knowledge about our site.  Thankfully, our partners at HNTB and the Wyandotte County - Kansas City, Kansas Unified Government, as well as other prominent stakeholders in the community have shared information, experiences and current plans to help us understand the site and develop maps and diagrams to further analyze its conditions.

Our next step is to wrap up the inventory phase by drawing conclusions from overlays of these maps and discussing our findings.  We have also begun diving into environmental and physical conditions of the site.  In these groups, we will explore noise and air pollution, brownfield sites, experiential spaces and viewsheds.  These types of mapping will further aid us in our comprehension of the site and its surroundings and better inform our design ideas and decisions down the road.

We hope you’ll continue to follow our journey via monthly updates, our social media (@kcdesigncenter), and eventually public meetings!  The Kansas City Design Center students and staff are excited to learn about this unique site and connect with our city!

Wrapping up another KCDC Project

As we wrap things up here this semester at KCDC, we have some time to reflect on all that we have overcome and achieved as a studio. In the beginning stages of the semester, we organized new groups and a few new students joined the team. We had a couple advisory meetings in January and February that proved to be pivotal to our success down the line. The shape of our project in the East Bottoms reflects the resilient nature that this studio had to develop in order to achieve what we have in the face of COVID-19. In our final review on May 13th, we were joined by former KCDC Director Mark Shapiro, James Pfeiffer, BNIM; Ryan McCabe, BNIM; Sara Hadavi, LARCP/KSU; Todd Gabbard, KSU; Michael Gibson, KSU; Alex Ogata, Populous; Ryan Gedney, HNTB; Tim Duggan, Phronesis; and landscape architect Kevin Cunnigham. The comments and insight they provided makes us all in the studio wish we had more time to take the East Bottoms project to the next level. However, we are very proud of the work we did and hope we can inspire future students to achieve the same level of success in the coming years at KCDC.
Throughout the summer, the KCDC will have three students producing the comprehensive project publication which we hope to have posted online to view for free by August (we will also have hard copies available for purchase on the website).

As always, we want to thank all of our project advisors, reviewers, stakeholders, and, of course, community members that have supported us throughout the year. We hope the project inspires and encourages change in the East Bottoms to make it a more resilient space that serves both industry and the public realm equally.

Final Details for the East Bottoms

While the coronavirus epidemic limits the studio to working from home, it has not prevented strong communication between groups and progress on the project. As the semester draws to a close, the vision study for the East Bottoms has gradually improved and become more refined and in about two weeks, we will present the final design iterations. 
Although we are unable to work face to face, the studio has been using Slack as a platform to discuss  any issues or changes with designs and share progress. Due to the open-ness of the platform, the whole studio is able to see how each focus group is working.

One of our more significant recent changes was to improve and refine the overall structure and details of the Folly and Boardwalk systems after reviewing each groups requirements and comments. After considering the typologies of each focus area, we were able to evolve the Folly’s to better serve the needs of each group while having a consistent design.

Boardwalk structure and sections

Main Folly structure

Each group received positive feedback after the last public meeting, as a result, the studio is in the last detailed design stage and each group has determined their main design direction.  The Working Landscape team has completed the overall design and improvement of the area and is now focused on refining the design of the trail system that runs through their section. The Riverfront Park team is combining different terrain conditions to make the trail design more consistent with the range of human activities that take place. The Industrial District group is now focused finalizing details along Universal Ave and the school area.  The Electric Park team has strengthened the connection between the East Bottoms and the rest of the city and has begun to focus on refining the residential area in addition to creating a connection to Riverfront Park. The whole studio is looking forward to seeing the overall project come together in the next two weeks!

Rendering of the proposed trail and bridge structure traversing a retention basin near Evergy in the design iterations for the Working Landscape area.