Nexus Park Master Plan + West Entrance Design

Research Park, Ames,IA Iowa State University

Residential Development

Workiva

Site ISU Research Park Ames Airport

Spring 2016 Stdio Project 3rd Year Ecological Design Studio Project Master Planďźš Xinman Liu,Matthew Iekel, Zhuojia Lou, Dominick Florer,Casey Ludwig, John Aceto West Entrance Designďźš Xinman Liu *All Graphics Used are rendered by Xinman Liu.

Ames, a peaceful town in the mid-west, and the home of Iowa State University. The site is located at southern corner of Ames, in which the new direction of urban sprawl. The site was a former agriculture land and located between Workiva(IT Company) and ISU Research Park. New high-end residential development and a new bike trail that connect with high trestle trail in Des Moins(Iowa Capital) was planed in the west side of the site. The site will serve as a living lab, a place for Inspiration and green foot forward for the city of Ames.We noticed that our site as a public park will be designed to meet different people, wildlifes and plants' need. At the same time, connect with the surrounding and other places in Ames physically, conceptually and functionally is very important. The city of Ames started to extend toward south, where our site located and the surrounding lack of public green space. During the master plan phase, we decided to design our site the green core for southern Ames, a place serve as spacial intersection, and a green buffer zone. We blend similar elements from our surrounding and used in our site design, to enhance the connection. In order to make the change from place to place faintly, the elements from surrouding gradully reduced toward the core(center) of the site. We came out the name "Nexus" for our design.