Ecological Community Center

0 Indiana Street

Lawrence, Kansas

Located right outside of Burcham park and next to historic Old West Lawrence this building was designed to be in collaboration with Friends of the Kaw, and area universities to support ecological research and preserve wildlife. The building wraps around a large garden space to encapsulate it and allow each building room to view it and study the wildlife. Also having the building located on a residential street gives the center the opportunity to further engage the community with river and wildlife health and advocacy.

Individual Project Fall 2021

Prof. Christi Dietze

Designing and Modeling

My main focus was encapsulating the greenery space within my building. To do this I knew I wanted my building to have some sort of wrapping envelope aspect. My process models explored different shapes and rooftop features that I could potentially use to capture the greenery space.

The buildings walls were larger to helped divided up the spaces and create tectonics along the site. The walls would also have built in features for the students and teachers to use as they pleased.

To create thermal comfort within the different rooms I added louvers along the west side of the building as the east side was shaded by trees from burcham park.