CENTRAL STATE AWARD WINNERS

Central States Conference 2014 Award Winners

(Professional Awards, Design Built Category)

Award of Excellence

Union Plaza | Lincoln, NE

Description:

Union Plaza is the name for a new three-block urban park… that will be constructed as part of the Antelope Valley flood and roadway project. This six-acre park will include four water features, a festival space, new trail connection, artwork, children’s play area, pond plaza, outdoor plaza seating, a scenic overlook and an outdoor amphitheater. Union Plaza is designed to be a community place that benefits the entire city. It will be a catalyst for economic development and provide a greenspace connection to UNL and downtown. It will help revitalize surrounding neighborhood and business areas.

Honor Award

Unity Tower Therapeutic Sculpture Garden | Unity Village, MO

Description:

The repurposing of the historic Unity Tower worked to restore the dilapidated landscape surrounding the historic water tower to a healing, restful and contemplative space while respecting the historic campus and architecture. The design creates a therapeutic space that provides an important, functional component of the new wellness center going into the restored water tower. The Gardens were used as a fund-raising mechanism to help financially support the tower restoration. The gardens express Unity’s philosophy, faith and positive spiritual principles for daily living for members and visitors alike.

Honor Award

Shimmer at Lakeside Terrace | Des Moines, IA

Description:

Shimmer at Lakeside Terrace strives to create a water feature/public art piece/ gathering space, “art + environment”, that is innovative and sustainable while attractive as a focal place in all seasons. The Lakeside Terrace was designed as a gathering place for a new community, a pedestrian destination, a staging area for special events, an additional dining and entertaining area for an adjacent restaurant and as a signature piece for the community. The project expands traditional design approaches to water features with a concept that is chemical free and highlights sustainable, natural eco-systems while using innovative materials and forms.

Merit Award

Linden Square at Gladstone Village Center | Gladstone, MO

Description:

The City of Gladstone, Missouri has been working to implement the community’s vision for a new Village Center adjacent the existing City Hall, Community Center and outdoor aquatics facility. This area hosts the City’s annual Fall festival known as “Gladfest”. The City has been acquiring property in this area for years in anticipation of attracting future development to create this Village Center. As a means to stimulate development interest/activity, the City decided to move forward proactively with the creation of a signature outdoor amenity space to serve as a destination park for the Village Center area.

Merit Award

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield Corporate Headquarters | Des Moines, IA

Description:

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield is a mutual insurance company located in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. In 2006 the company embarked upon an effort consolidated its headquarters and operations center from multiple locations to a single facility in downtown Des Moines for its 1500 employees and associated parking garage. Of significance is that the design was influential in keeping the corporation in downtown Des Moines, created a design that responded to the urban condition that was selected, and created a public park within the heart of the new campus. The project was completed in 2010.
(Professional Awards, Design Unbuilt Category)

Merit Award

Central Moore Park Master Plan | Moore, OK

Description:

Purpose of the Project: Create a long-range master plan for the 55-acre Central Moore Park located within the urban core of the City of Moore and develop a future full build-out implementation strategy prioritizing the phase one construction project with a voter approved $24,900,000 budget. Complete detailed design, construction documents, bidding, and construction period services for the phase one project.

Explore the historic cultural significance of the Park site, bordered on the west by the active BNSF Railroad corridor – which was instrumental in the founding of Moore, and integrate this rich cultural heritage into the Park design through interpretation and education.

Facilitate a participatory process engaging citizens, user groups, developers, multiple city departments, and elected officials to validate established phase one program and understand community and regional park and recreation needs, desirable restored natural systems, and economic catalyst opportunities for the park.

Merit Award

Zirve University Hospital Master Plan | Gaziantep, Turkey

Description:

The project includes a comprehensive Masterplan and Landscape Design for a 2,000,000 SF hospital and research campus on 40 acres in Gaziantep, Turkey. Conceived as a multiple-phase project, an initial 280-bed specialty hospital will be expanded to include an additional 196 beds, a conference and education center, and a 300,000 square foot medical research facility. The campus organization is intended to foster collaboration between clinicians and researchers, and facilitate the development of innovative treatments in neuroscience and organ transplantation. The campus will also include physician villas, nursing dormitories, a 120-room hotel, and gymnasium.

(Professional Awards, Planning & Analysis Category)

Honor Award

Sustainable Design and Disaster Recovery | Mapleton, IA

Description:

In April of 2011, an EF3 tornado tore through the town of Mapleton, Iowa, flattening over one third of the community. Landscape Architects entered the project knowing that despite the potential for positive change in disaster recovery, local desire to return to normal as soon as possible and knowledge of sustainable infrastructure planning could prevent this from happening. Landscape architects used a participatory action research approach to planning to overcome these problems, engaging local leaders and residents in assessing conditions and formulating strategy for rebuilding with us. A community survey and focus groups, storm water mapping, expert interviews and a two-day open door planning charrette made discovery of shared problems and change strategies accessible to veryone. Through this process, residents learned that pre-existing infrastructure design exacerbated the impacts of the tornado; and that rebuilding would be challenging without a comprehensive redesign of storm water, streets and open space; and that using cutting edge landscape architectural techniques and resilient design frameworks would provide the positive outcomes they wanted for their community.

Honor Award

Clive Town Center Plan | Des Moines, IA

Description:

The project strived to create a town center for a maturing suburb of Des Moines that lacks a central identity and place to gather as a community. Leverage the short-term need for a new city hall and public safety building as well as the long-term need for a new library, additional civic facilities and alternative housing options. Work with private developers to respond to market needs for a strategic, in-fill site in the heart of the community.

Merit Award

Washington University Tree Master Plan | St. Louis, MO

Description:

The Washington University Campus Tree Master Plan was developed to provide the Danforth Campus and its urban forest with comprehensive design strategies for forestation and forest maintenance on its grounds. As a flexible framework for changing needs, the master plan addresses contemporary environmental quality issues with solutions that satisfy the projected environmental imperatives of the future. Strategies within this master plan serve both the current landscape conditions and an evolving built environment by establishing a successional approach to tree planting that balances aesthetic and functional concerns.

Merit Award

Farmland Industries Business Park Master Plan | Lawrence, KS

Description:

A master plan to repurpose the former Farmland Industries nitrogen fertilizer property site as a new business park that incorporates sustainable land use, promotes renewable energy ideas, brownfield redevelopment, bio-energy and reinforces community partnerships. Providing solutions to connectivity between existing land uses was a key criteria for Proposed Master Plan & Vehicular Access lot layout in the new development. The master plan creates current and future routes for multimodal transportation to occur immediately or as the park grows.

Merit Award

Lincoln Entryways Corridor Master Plan | Lincoln, NE

Description:

The scope of this effort is to establish a Master Plan along two Entryways to the City of Lincoln. The first entryway runs north/south and focuses on the I-180 corridor from Fletcher Avenue to downtown Lincoln. The second runs east/west and extends from the Lincoln Municipal Airport Entry Corridor along Cornhusker Highway from N.W. 12th Street and West Adams. The timeliness of the Entryways Master Plan is due in part to recent developments adjacent to the corridors and in downtown Lincoln. These include the development of the new Pinnacle Bank Arena; new proposed facilities in the “sports triangle” west of I-180 near Haymarket Park; the development of Nebraska Innovation Campus; an intersection re-design of 14th Street and Cornhusker Highway; and the adoption of a new Lincoln branding campaign developed by the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce. The Master Plan is based on guiding principles that promote public health, community viability, environmental sustainability, economic efficiency, stewardship, and attractive aesthetics.

Merit Award

The Iowa Riverfront Master Plan | Coralville, IA

Description:

The City of Coralville retained the entrant to create a Master Plan for the Iowa River Riverfront, its associated tributaries through Coralville and the connection of the Riverfront to the Coralville Town Center. Beyond this Master Plan Area, the entrant also provided analysis and recommendations related to how the Riverfront fit into the context of the Iowa City/Coralville metropolitan area and Johnson County as a whole. The Master Plan addresses transportation, recreation, environmental and land use redevelopment opportunities.

Merit Award

Shawnee Mission Parkway Corridor Plan | Merriam, KS

Description:

The City of Merriam has significantly redeveloped a large portion of their Interstate 35 frontage over the last decade, yet the area adjacent to the Shawnee Mission Parkway corridor has not changed significantly. The existing K-Mart building has been vacant and surrounding parcels within a 25-acre area are currently underutilized. IKEA is constructing a new facility just north of the study area, which is anticipated to generate additional interest in redevelopment within the study area. This project included engaging the community to establish a vision, and creating/evaluating several redevelopment scenarios to assist the City in evaluating future development proposals.

(Professional Awards, Research Category)

Merit Award

Economic Framework for feature selection in Healing Gardens

HDR Architecture | Omaha, NE

Description:

This research presents an economic framework for feature selection that can be used to design healing gardens. The framework consists of feature based Benefits to cost analysis to assist decision making. A real world case-study is subsequently presented to highlight the implementation of the proposed methodology. The case-study used the healing garden at Methodist Women’s Hospital as the test site. This site was specifically selected because it contains various design features as prescribed by the theory of supportive design. The study also explores the bias of designers and contrasts it against the proposed economic framework.

(Professional Awards, Communication Category)

Honor Award

Reintegrating: Independence Avenue Urban Vision Study

Kansas City Design Center | Kansas City, MO

Description:

The purpose of the project was to generate an urban vision study for a 4-mile stretch of Independence Avenue in the NE Kansas City including its extended urban context, and by building on the existing planning documents and redevelopment initiatives, render a more tangible design proposition for strategic transformation and urban improvement of the study area. The most challenging question that needed to be come to terms with was the issue of a ‘disjointed city:’ an urban scape made of the patches of imposing historic structures, vacant and disused lots and structures, ad hoc and colloquial street front architecture, the forgotten geography of the city beautiful imprint, and the reverberation of life of many cultures that stake its place in it. It represents the palimpsest of the many city incarnations written one over another in the same place yet not quite overlapping and leaving blank spaces in between marking the vicissitudes of time and economy.

Merit Award

Greening America’s Capitals

BNIM in collaboration with Vireo and Spectrum Consulting Group

Description:

The EPA funded a team of designers to visit Jefferson City, Missouri; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Des Moines, Iowa to produce schematic designs and exciting illustrations intended to catalyze a larger planning process. The team created documents to describe the planning process and community vision. The documents are testing ground for citywide actions and assist city staff in developing specific implementation strategies. The lessons learned can help other communities, large and small, grow and develop in a greener way.

(Student Awards, Design Built Category)

Merit Award

Regeneration del Parque Eden: Inspiring an Island Community | Galapagos, Ecuador

Lead by Kim Wilson | University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Description:

The purpose of this project was to revitalize a deteriorating urban park within a developing community, engaging local stakeholders and encouraging reciprocity through participatory orientation. Through interdisciplinary research paired with community involvement, we sought to find a solution that is attuned to the isolated condition of this island landscape and sensitive to the inaccessibility of resources and materials. The success of this project lies in the reciprocity encouraged through an iterative community process that provoked action within the island community in Puerto Ayora.

(Student Awards, Design Unbuilt Category)

Honor Award

Productive Ground: 21^st Century Design Strategies for Fairmont Park | Manhattan, KS

Description:

Guided by best management practices for 21st century park design and implementation, Fairmont Park can become a multifunctional, multi-beneficial, and multigenerational amenity for the Manhattan community. The layering of restored and constructed ecologies, passive and active recreational amenities, and sustainability demonstration facilities, will improve the park’s overall environmental, social, and economic benefits. As the city’s first sustainable park, environmental stewardship, physical activity, local food production and composting, stormwater management, and sustainability education are achieved.

Merit Award

Prairie Vision: Envisioning a Sustainable Model for Campus Stormwater Management | Manhattan, KS

Description:

Outside the entrances to Hale Library on the Kansas State University Campus, a landscape of 13,260 square feet will be transformed into a highly improved stormwater management system with the overall intent to create a sustainable campus model for stormwater management and to promote a future campus greenway network. The design will educate passersby about native vegetation and green infrastructure, will improve the health and stability of Campus Creek downstream, and will visually accent a prominent campus building. Educational components will highlight low-impact development strategies and engineering techniques. Features will include water filtration and infiltration systems, rain gardens, permeable paving, decreased lawn space, native plantings, shaded hardscape, and wet meadow areas. Seating nooks will encourage people to sit and observe the native vegetation and water processes.

Merit Award

The Rain Pocket | Manhattan, KS

Description:

It is the aim of the Rain Pocket to inspire a new appreciation of water and prairie that may be further manifested in a more sustainable campus. The Rain Pocket is located near the southwest corner of the Kansas State University Campus, adjacent to the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art. This site was chosen because it engages museum patrons while it is also on the student path to Aggieville, the popular entertainment district, and on the path of Manhattan residents to McCain, the performing arts center on campus. The Rain Pocket is a water sculpture and rain garden in the area outside this window, in the space directly adjacent to the museum’s entry path. A floor to ceiling window in the museum looks out onto the site which provides a unique opportunity to take the design beyond being purely functional and educational to also being a work of art.

(Student Awards, Planning & Analysis Category)

Honor Award

Flood Resiliency: A Green Infrastructure Vision | Sioux City, IA

Lead by Kim Wilson | University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Description:

The Missouri River is North America’s longest river and serves an important role to the community – both environmentally and economically. Back to the River (BttR), a multi-dimensional foundation focused on enhancing the ecological, recreational, and historical corridor along the Missouri River in Nebraska and Iowa, has a long-standing dream of the river becoming the heart of adjacent communities. That dream is being realized through the combined efforts of public and private sponsors, who recognize a balance between the Missouri’s historically-recognized value as a commercial waterway and as an important natural habitat.

Honor Award

Complex Catalysts: Resilient Urbanism for Eastern KCMO | Kansas City, MO

Description:

Complex Catalysts is the continuation of a multi-year community planning and design effort aimed at understanding and planning for future growth in the Kansas City Metro Area. Faculty and students have been collaborating with the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) as a university partner on the Creating Sustainable Places Initiative (CSP) in a variety of capacities including research, master’s projects and reports, and community planning and design studios. The purpose of this project, explored by a mid-level landscape architecture design studio, is to present a model of resilient urbanism that will accommodate approximately 8% of the metro area’s anticipated population growth over the next 30 years. Building on previous studio research, planning documents, and long-term plans developed by regional agencies, Complex Catalysts proposes a comprehensive planning framework and five design proposals leveraging the regional economic vitality of the Truman Sports Complex. Maximizing public transit through Transit Oriented Development, restoring ecological health and water quality through ecologically sensitive design, and supporting robust economic growth through job creation were foundational goals to our vision of eastern Metro Kansas City.

Merit Award

Redesigning River des Peres: To Improve, Protect and Maintain | St. Louis, MO

Description:

In 1988 the River des Peres in St. Louis, Missouri became recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as a National Historic Civil Engineering landmark for the channel calculations involved, the large trench dewatering methods, and stabilization techniques. Over the years this “river” has become heavily channelized and degraded, becoming an eyesore for much of the community. The main channel of the River des Peres is more of a combined sanitary and stormwater sewer system than an actual river. The water quality of the river is impacted by combined sewer overflows, toxic runoff from industrial and commercial areas, high amounts of chloride from roadways, and low volumes of dissolved oxygen making it a river uninhabitable for wildlife. The implementation of stormwater best management practices (BMPs) can improve river water quality, river corridor aesthetics, and wildlife habitat. This project aims to restore the hydrograph, floodplains, and river channels throughout the River des Peres watershed. The watershed stormwater BMP plans were developed in correspondence with the 1.5 year bankfull discharge (the flow that shapes and maintains a channel over time) for the river and its tributaries, including Deer Creek and Gravois Creek. By reducing the bankfull discharge and restoring the hydrograph, ecological services are restored or enhanced.

Merit Award

Scotts Bluff National Monument Trails Plan | Gering, NE

Description:

Scotts Bluff National Monument is located in Gering, Nebraska. The area is characterized by highly erodible, sandy soil stabilized by mixed grass prairie. The bluffs served as a landmark for travelers along the Oregon Trail. Today, the ruts carved into the land by the thousands of wagons can still be seen, providing a unique opportunity to walk in the footsteps of history. The rich history, delicate ecosystems, and sensitive soil conditions made the task of creating a trails master plan a challenge.