Meet our new Studio teammates!

A snapshot of our Open House in December, where the community was invited to view the design proposals for the project and talk with students about their ideas.

Phase two of the Kessler Park Water Reservoir Re-visioning has begun. Following our Open House in December, students have continued to develop design iterations for the project. Last week, the KCDC urban design studio met with a group of artists and arts advocates from the Northeast neighborhoods with the goal of exploring how the project can incorporate the arts into each of the three different design schemes. Now that we have conducted a premliminary meeting with these arts leaders, we hope to convene a larger meeting with other artists, arts advocates and leaders, to get broad feedback on our proposals moving forward.

Alexa Radley

Sloane Gleeson

Becca Boles

Reagen Orr

Jay Olsen

This semester, we welcome five additional students to the KCDC’s Urban Design Studio. As we begin more indepth design studies, the added perspectives of these incoming students has become influential in pushing the project. These students come from the following areas of study: Alexa Radley, Architecture; Becca Boles, Regional & Community Planning; Jay Olsen, Interior Architecture; Sloane Gleeson, Interior Architecture; Reagen Orr, Interior Architecture. We’re excited to see how the project grows with our new studio teammates!

Looking forward, we have a series of meetings that will be critical for project development including our next professional review on February 18th, our first community meeting of the year on February 22nd, and our next meeting with our project advisory group on March 2nd. It will be a busy month before spring break!

Three options for the Reservoir transformation

A great deal has occurred since our last update! The class has been hard at work developing the three design schemes for the reservoir.

The studio had their second professional review in early December, where they received valuable feedback on the project as we move ahead. Our three design schemes: Preservation, Intersection and Integration have all continued their development along with the Master Plan based on the class’s previous analysis work. Come along with us and walk through the work we have developed so far.

Beginning first with the Master Plan we have developed so far, we have anchored around three primary developments within the park: the development of a parking lot at the end of Prospect Avenue, development of a rain garden, and the rejuvenation of Wabash Avenue to better increase use with the park and improve traffic flow. The fourth prime topic we propose is the removal of cars within the park day-to-day. This dramatic change is based on our analysis and the valuable feedback we have received from our previous community meetings. The parking lot provides the catalyst for the removal of cars from the park, leading to a plaza located at the intersection of Wabash and Lexington providing the beginning to visitors experience of the park.

3 Design Schemes:

As our previous post mentioned, we are currently pursuing three possible proposals for Kessler Park and its Reservoir. Since last time, however, we have further developed the design with each of these proposals.

We begin with the Preservation scheme. This scheme is concerned with preserving the characteristics of the reservoir as it is today and compounding the positive aspects. To accomplish this, we have completed a preliminary analysis for the foliage in the reservoir with the help of community members and arborists. Based upon that, the ramp that brings visitors down into the reservoir weaves through these existing trees and additional ones proposed to be planted. The progress through the trees would mesh the experience of the park with the manmade artificial aspect of the reservoir itself. Moreover, the south side of the reservoir would house a performance area/amphitheater, providing space for neighborhood activities.

Foliage study

Preservation scheme master plan

Rendering of the design proposal for the preservation scheme

The Intersection scheme has not fallen behind the development of the previous scheme either. For reference, in this scheme we began looking at keeping the Reservoir’s overall form, but to allowing access into and out of the interior of the Reservoir into the rest of the park. In this way, we aim to knit the two spaces together, but also retain the Reservoir’s essence of a space within a park and the benefits that come with that. Since last time, we have developed preliminary considerations as to what occurs within the spaces of the Reservoir and what infrastructure needs to be provided to cultivate positive activities in those areas. Among these devices are shading structures, which are still being developed.

Intersection design scheme master plan

Axon rendering of the Intersection design scheme

Finally, the Integration scheme has continued its development as well. This scheme is the most dramatic, investigating how the removal of sides of the Reservoir can increase the importance of the Reservoir in Kessler Park and the prominence of the park in general. To that end, this scheme is concerned with providing a regional destination in the Northeast neighborhoods of Kansas City while still allowing the all-important current activities within the park and neighborhood uses. To do this, there were four main zones that this scheme looks at: a green space to the south of the Reservoir providing a path towards the main event, a flexible community space within the south half of the Reservoir, a stage and amphitheater on the North half of the Reservoir and a final overlook pavilion that capitalizes on the spectacular views that only Kessler can offer to the rest of the city.  The Northern amphitheater would provide the regional destination that is mentioned in this scheme’s mission, providing facilities for numerous activities.

We’ve learned a great deal from this semester’s work and are excited to continue the project in our next semester! The project won’t be far from our minds, and we hope to do all we can to provide an in-depth proposal for the neighborhood and city!

Public Meeting #2 and 3 Main Design Concepts

It’s been a while since our last update and we have some exciting new progress to share with you!

Since our last update, we’ve had meetings with both our advisory group and the general public. The KCDC studio has been busy developing concepts and plans for how the reservoir and the surrounding park context could be designed or manipulated to best function as an experience for visitors. We have broken the concepts down to three varying levels of alteration to the reservoir: preservation, intersection, and integration. As these three conceptual schemes are developed, we are beginning to look at what the reservoir and its surrounding park context could be programmed as. We recently had a public meeting at PH Coffee where we were able to present the current status of the project and have a dialogue with those in the community about what programs they would like to see in the three conceptual schemes, along with other general critiques.

3 Design Schemes:

The preservation concept is the least invasive of the schemes. Rather than carve out any portion of the reservoir, this group is studying how to reconnect the reservoir in passive ways. Students have been researching the vegetation of the park and concluding which plants should stay or be removed based primarily on the species and whether it is invasive. This concept utilizes an extended ramp that weaves through one side of the reservoir allowing visitors to experience its current condition, while the other side could be used as flex programming.

The intersection concept (also known as the tunneling concept) is the happy medium between the other two alterations. A series of cuts through the reservoir’s massive walls allows for planned paths and an extension of the park’s “rooms” to bleed into the reservoir. This way, the rooms can have direct connections to each other, strengthening the usability of the reservoir and its connection to the rest of Kessler Park.

The final concept, integration, is the boldest approach. This approach is centered around the effects of removing large sections of the reservoir’s walls. This group of students looked at the resulting spatial qualities if the north wall was removed or if the east wall was removed and so on with the other cardinal directions. In these schemes, the blending between the park’s rooms and the reservoir are maximized, opening up many more possibilities for programming.

In addition to the conceptual schemes, the studio is working on a master plan for the project. The master plan functions as a general plan to guide the conclusions of our research while also serving as a frame for the conceptual schemes to sit within. The overall idea of the master plan is to reduce the vehicle traffic on Wabash Avenue and shift to a pedestrian focused corridor entry into the park. Primary vehicle traffic would then be relocated to Prospect Avenue where it leads straight to a new parking lot. Within the park we’ll close Lookout Point Drive to vehicles so the park is completely pedestrian focused. The plan also includes a designated area for the implementation of water management solutions.

We are currently preparing for in-progress discussions with local design professionals, so that we might have a better understanding the programmatic opportunities of the park and reservoir.  As we continue to work on the project, we encourage feedback from any and all! Keep an eye out for more information about our end of semester Open House which will take place at the KCDC on December 16th!

Northeast News @ KCDC public meeting

Last week, we held our second public meeting for the Kessler Park water reservoir vision study and were thrilled to have Abby Hoover with the Northeast News cover the meeting. You can check out here write up here. You can also view the livestream of the meeting on youtube and answer our questionnaire to help guide the project!

Concepts & More!

A little over a month has passed since we started studying the reservoir and  we have some updates!

For the past couple of weeks we have been working hard towards our very first upcoming project review. As we continue pushing our research and our findings, we have also started incorporating a couple of potential concepts for both the reservoir and the direct site around it. While the concepts are still in their preliminary stages, we are excited to present them to different professionals from around the area and get their feedback on how to move forward. Before this however, we have been critiquing ourselves as a studio to make sure we present our work in its best quality. 

A lot of the concepts that we have developed revolve around the ‘rooms’ that directly surround the reservoir. As seen in the diagram below, these outdoor rooms are defined by the designed existing streets, topographical conditions, and the foliage that surrounds them. These rooms also define the different activities that are ongoing in the reservoir, like disc golf. We have identified these rooms as being the root of our proposals, since we can begin to identify potential paths that unite them, as well as potential concepts that are driven by the lack of connection between these rooms and the reservoir. 

A few other concepts focus on the reservoir’s historical symmetry and present asymmetry. As we studied the reservoir’s geometry and proportions from historical plans to present conditions, we identified the two basins of the reservoir to be originally designed as a symmetrical pair, but the nature of its morphology to the present has created an asymmetrical environment due to the cracks and decay in the materials. This shift in condition throughout history is an important aspect of the reservoir, which is why our concepts aim to highlight through a contrasting axis. 

We continue to work hard to further develop these preliminary concepts and hope to gain applicable feedback from our peers, colleagues and, most importantly, the community!