Understanding the most fitting solution to Alma Kansas’ lack of shade for their city pool meant stepping back and taking an in depth look at Alma as a community. We spent time researching the history and development of Alma as well as contextual influences such as climate, community values, and connectivity. Collectively this process of understanding has led to the studio moving forward with the implementation of a shade structure that aims to serve more than one role for the park as a whole. When completed the structure will be multi-functional and will activate an underutilized portion of the park for year round community engagement. The details and language of the shade pavilion aspire to create a dialogue with the existing structure and spur future park improvements.

Interaction is necessary in order to be responsive to social context and gain the trust of the client and town as a whole. With open community meetings and outreach we met many of the residents of the town and received helpful input on how to maximize the structure. This interchange led to an understanding of place that would have been hard or impossible to learn from research or simply visiting the site. As an example we talked to families and individuals who use the park on a regular basis to find out what areas are the most functional. From these discussions we assessed that although the south end of the park was large and open it wasn’t thought of as usable space. We added activating this space this to our list of desired goals we hoped to achieve with our proposal.