Design + Make Studio
The Bank Art Space - Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park
Fall 2021 & Spring 2022
Revit, Rhino, Illustrator, Photoshop, Enscape
In this Graduate Capstone Architecture Design Studio, my fellow classmates and I are given the opportunity to design various rural projects focusing on what impact they will have on the surrounding environment and community. Alongside this task, we are also focusing on how these projects might be constructed and our relationship within that process. The Bank Art Space located in Matfield Green, KS has provided this studio with the challenge of restoration and preservation of a significant cultural and historical storefront located on the main street of the town. This gallery is dedicated to serving local artists share art that expresses the place of a rural community within the Tallgrass Prairie, but even more than that, it serves the town of 45 as a cultural center to connect people to the earth and each other through art. As the Bank has served the community for many years, the building’s current state makes the building no longer capable of holding this function bringing forth the question of restoring or rebuilding. Our response to this challenge is to retain the storefront and demolish the rest of the building, holding on to the symbolic lone storefront and focusing the project on how to preserve the Bank as a place for community and art to come together. By splitting the additional program added to the space into two buildings, our proposal allows for the gallery to maintain its current dimensions and also provides an external courtyard for it to extend into. This project is still in the design phase of the studio, but we are already beginning to develop details to fabricate as the spring semester is underway.
As a team member in this project, I was directly responsible for developing all line drawings presented. While I collaborated with the other aspects of the design and production, the physical model and renderings were completed by other members.
Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park, located just south of Oakley, KS, holds Niobrara chalk formations which serve as a habitat for many different plants and wildlife. The Nature Conservancy of Kansas, alongside other stakeholders, provided the Design+Make studio the opportunity to design and construct a ranger station for the Little Jerusalem Badlands. While on-site, the studio realized the possibilities of design to capture the untamed beauty of these formations. The Wedge, an individual proposal, aims to allow all visitors to interact with this natural wonder and a place for the ranger to share his or her knowledge of this unique landscape. The project utilizes a wedge shape to orient the visitors to the chalk formations while also providing an overlook to capture a panoramic view of the unique environment. Through this design, all visitors will acquire different perspectives of the reserve as a framed view underneath provides a place for the visitor to focus on the Niobrara Chalk formations alongside displayed information curated by the rangers. While many people may not venture down into the formations, the Wedge begins to explore the feeling of submerging into a landscape as the ramped path cuts into the Wedge bringing the visitor a similar feeling of walking through the formations. Altogether this project aims to give all visitors the ability to explore and understand this unique portion of Kansas’ landscape.
