As we begin the last stretch towards the final reviews, each segment of the Greenline is finalizing their segment designs based on Chuck Flink’s feedback from last week. Alongside our adjustments, we’re planning out our exhibit for the Greenline opening on May 11th at the Central Library. We’re working on compiling all of our research, laying out posters, and expressing the narrative of the entire Greenline and its individual segments in a way that is understandable by people who have never heard of the Greenline.

To gain a better understanding of the Greenline from a cyclist’s perspective, we thought it was important to do a bike tour of some of the segments. Lee Trotter with “Free Wheels for Kids”, let us borrow bikes and joined Andrew Arfstrom of West Bottoms Bicycles and Mark Horne of HOK to lead us in a tour. We rode from West Bottoms Bicycles, along the Riverfront Heritage Trail, to the Town of Kansas Bridge, into Kaw Point Park, and finally ending at the newly re-opened Rock Island Bridge. It was helpful to experience some of the specific alignment issues along the trail for ourselves, like when we had to get off our bikes under the Union Pacific bridge.

I’ve been working on the South segment team along the Crossroads in our studio groups. Recently, we’ve had discussions over our gateway locations, and what the relationship between 19th Street and 18th Street looks like with the proposed opening of the Streetcar on 18th. With our segment being a medium to house art and events, we’re currently designing strategies to potentially close certain segments of the Greenline to house these elements for business events or First Fridays.

In our seminar, we also met with Doug Stockman of Helix Architecture + Design. Going over many of Helix’s projects over the years, we take this to give us a better understanding of what affordable housing could look like while keeping an element of community and architecture in our projects.

As we move into the final week of studio, we begin to refine and finalize our designs to reinforce our narrative for our team’s segments.

Written by Andrew Bui, Fourth Year Architecture Student

Greenline Bike Tour