Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Appointed by the Housing Authority of Kansas City, andBrinshore Development, Dake Well architects are responsible for reinventing a dilapidated series of structures existing at the heart of a high-crime and low-hope neighborhood.
As part of the Paseo Gateway Choice Neighborhood Transformation Plan, Dake Well architects were called to reform the neighborhood and create a decentralized construction project to replace the units that were demolished.
As a result,Pendleton ArtsBlock was created, a 41,000 sq ft, 38-unit project that reconsiders the concept of replacement housing and neighborhood catalyzation by proactively including artists in the tenant mix.
The project has been awarded a 2021 AmericanAward for Architecture from The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
Responding to the scale and massing of the surrounding neighborhood, the design team raised a three-story masonry structure over a more transparent ground level of community and artist-occupied spaces designed to promote pedestrian interaction.
Throughout the design process, community members, stakeholders, and artists were actively engaged through public meetings, visioning workshops, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews. Resident surveys were conducted to understand residents’ needs in education, health, recreation, and economic resources.
By implementing design strategies that address the specific needs of Chouteau Courts residents and the larger community, ArtsBlock has been successful in creating a safe, affordable, community-oriented, dignity-restoring housing complex that has sparked economic growth along Independence Avenue and in the Pendleton Heights neighborhood as a whole.
By sparking new life with multiple destinations on an important but under-performing street, ArtsBlock rethinks how a mixed-use typology with artists as catalysts can break a decades-old cycle of poverty.
Project: Pendleton ArtsBlock
Architects: Dake Wells Architecture
Client: Brinshore Development, LLC. and the Housing Authority of Kansas City
Contractor: 4Sight Construction Group
Photographers: Courtesy of the Architects
