Prairie Commons – Red Cloud Open-Air Venue and Gardens
Location
Red Cloud, Nebraska
Clients
Amy Springer
Partners
National Willa Cather Center
Students
Gavin Stelling, Miles Godfrey, Grace Vollmuth, Paulina Garcia-Medrano
The Prairie Commons is an adaptive reuse project that explores new uses for an abandoned Methodist church in Red Cloud, Nebraska. The project establishes new activities through a process of architectural subtraction and adaptation of what remains after years of neglect.
The project’s process of architectural subtraction “frames” new uses rather than preserves the past as a historicist artefact. In this respect, adaptive reuse offers a new approach to problems facing rural Midwestern towns that continue to suffer from decline and depopulation.
The Prairie Commons becomes a living, creative commons, a place where memory and material are preserved, creativity is shared, and the community gains a vibrant hub that both honours the past and celebrates the present.
The original 1905 structure of site-cast concrete block is retained to enclose new cultural programs for performance and local events, especially in conjunction with the Willa Cather Center.
Interior structure elements from the floor and roof are removed and salvaged for future reuse. Existing dimensional lumber will be re-milled and bonded into “secondary” mass-timber components for roof trusses and seating. Other valued elements, like the pressed metal ceiling, are replicated through silicone mould casts for cast-in-place concrete retaining walls below ground level.
