Designed by E. Fay Jones and Maurice Jennings, Powell Gardens required the construction of an entire botanical garden campus, including a visitor’s center, chapel, and monumental entry experience.
Details
Kingsville, MO
Architect: E. Fay Jones and Jennings + Santa-Rita Architects LLC
Visitor's Center: 45,000 sf / Chapel: 10,000 sf / Entry Monument: 25,000 sf (site)
Designed by E. Fay Jones and Maurice Jennings, Powell Gardens required the construction of an entire botanical garden campus, including a visitor’s center, chapel, and monumental entry experience. This was the largest architectural commission ever undertaken by the architects.
Visitors’ Center
The 45,000-square-foot visitor’s center is a redwood-framed structure featuring stone flooring, wood shake roofing, and integral redwood window framing with insulated glass. The building incorporates both operable and fixed skylights for ventilation and daylighting of interior plant materials, alongside indoor landscaping pools, a commercial kitchen and dining facility, and numerous classrooms, education spaces, and multipurpose rooms. Parking, lighting, walking paths, and exterior seating areas were constructed across the surrounding campus, with retaining walls, irrigation, and drainage systems supporting both interior and exterior planting environments.
Chapel
The 10,000-square-foot chapel shares the redwood framing language of the visitor’s center, with integral window systems, insulated glass, and wood shake roofing. Passive solar design maximizes daylighting throughout the space. Architectural lighting, stone flooring, wooden seating, and a raised redwood stage create an environment suited for weddings, funerals, and other gatherings. A geothermal pond loop system, located in the adjacent Powell Gardens lake, provides heating and cooling for the chapel.
Entry Monument
The campus entry monument creates a dramatic arrival sequence from Highway 50. Massive concrete retaining walls and planter beds support a Corten steel structural framework of columns, beams, and arches, which in turn carries “Sheaves of Wheat,” a bronze sculpture originally commissioned for display on the Kansas City Board of Trade Building. Our team disassembled, evaluated, and re-welded the artwork to integrate it into the new structure. Visitors pass under and through this concrete, stone, and steel composition upon entering the gardens. A cantilevered concrete entry sign with bronze logo and lettering projects toward the highway, and extensive landscape lighting illuminates the signage, artwork, and plantings.
“Powell Gardens: Kansas City’s botanical garden has had a long-standing and very successful relationship with Pearce Construction since the Gardens’ inception 34 years ago. Most recently, we worked with Pearce Construction to build a new front entrance and monument. This masterpiece was completed in fall of 2020 on time and on budget. It is simply a stunning structure that beautifully blends architecture, art and nature. Pearce Construction did a phenomenal job on this project and its many complicated facets. Of note, they had the important responsibility of ensuring that a Kansas City icon, the “Sheaves of Wheat” that graced the Kansas City Board of Trade was installed safely and securely as our new gateway arch. I have worked with Pearce on several projects in my five years as the CEO, and every time, I am more than satisfied; I am elated.”