The academic year concluded with our Open House event on May 9th. We were thrilled to welcome the community to see the progress made on our KCK Housing Revitalization Vision Study and individual housing typologies projects, incorporating feedback from our final design review. For the first time, we displayed the prefabrication panels we worked on during the semester. These panels connect to the master plan and housing typologies by demonstrating building techniques that could be part of a larger, year-long project focused on revitalizing the neighborhoods around Bethany Park on Central Avenue with affordable, multigenerational, and mixed-use housing. The Open House brought closure to the semester, providing an opportunity for students, faculty, and community members to celebrate our accomplishments, share insights, and discuss future plans for the Bethany Park project, including the master plan, housing typologies projects, and prefabrication panels.

As summer approaches, we will be developing the publication for the KCK Housing Revitalization 2023 and Spring 2024 design project and prefabrication exhibit.

As the academic year comes to a close, so too does our current design project. This past Monday, we welcomed a panel of critics to partake in our final design review. Among the critics were Gunner Hand and Alyssa Marcy from the UGWC Planning Department; Greg Sheldon, Sarah Murphy, and Michael Luczak from BNIM; and our former Director, Vladimir Krstic. Our review took a deep dive into the different pieces of our Bethany Park Masterplan, which includes a range of housing typologies from detached, single-family houses to a mid-rise, mixed-use building, as well as programmatic Nodes between the residential pieces. As a studio, we are using the feedback we received in our review to prepare our Bethany Park Masterplan for presentation in the Heintzelman Design Competition in Manhattan, Kansas, which celebrates the design work produced by 5th-Year Architecture students at Kansas State University.

On Thursday, May 9, we will be welcoming the community to come and see our work at our Open House event. We will have our masterplan and each of our housing typologies on display as a prototype for further housing developments throughout Kansas City, Kansas.

We have been continuing our work on designing the final master plan for the Bethany Park site. Our focus has been on incorporating individual housing units and typologies into the site, with the aim of creating an affordable community that embraces the culture within our master plan - this includes integrating walkable features and enhancing amenities within the park space.

On Monday, we had the opportunity to present our master plan to Jeremy Knoll from BNIM and Maria Isabela Pineda, an architect at Cota Arquitectura in Maracaibo, Venezuela, who is currently a fellow in the YLAI program through Global Ties KC. During the presentation, we discussed steps to further develop our master plan and create spaces within the housing units and typologies to foster a walkable community. As a team, we explored various design and organizational strategies for placing our housing units and typologies within nodes to provide the community with convenient access to shared amenity spaces. Their input was greatly appreciated and has been instrumental in guiding our team towards valuable advancements in our updated master plan.

We are excited about the significant benefits this master plan can bring to KCK. Please stay tuned for future updates on its progress!