KCK COMMUNITY CENTER

Cultural Community Center | 25,000 sq ft

Downtown | Kansas City, KS

Professor Thom Allen

Spring 2020

Preserve views of murals

Recess outdoor spaces and create pathways

Located in downtown Kansas City, KS on the avenue of murals, this community center aims to be the home of storytelling in KCK that allows artists of the city to create stories that contribute to the culture and history of the city. There are two murals on the site that give context into the cultural backgrounds of the area. The first mural, “Facing the Past, Looking to the Future: a Kansas Hmong Storycloth”, tells the story of the Hmong people that travelled from the United States from Vietnam after the Vietnam War creating a large population of about 1,500 people in the area. The second mural, “Kansas Printer”, shows a printer at handpress, honoring the history of the building it’s on that housed the community’s newspaper for 80 years in the heart of downtown. The design frames the main mural on the site, “Facing the Past, Looking to the Future: A Kansas Hmong Storycloth”, while peeling back and providing a view to the second mural, giving a glimpse into the past of the cultures and history of Kansas City, Kansas and becoming a place to create new stories to contribute to the community.