| UMB Headquarters Kansas City, Missouri |
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On a prominent site at the heart of Kansas City's central business district, 360,000 SF mixed use regional bank corporate headquarters building and is master planned for expansion in the future to 630,000 SF. The structure houses a 400 car underground garage, highest quality executive facilities, tenant offices, conferencing center, shared community facilities, food service, secure banking operations, art gallery, computer-data processing center with disaster resistant construction and UPS emergency power systems, and state-of-the-art security and communications systems.
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In a public opinion survey conducted by the Kansas City Architectural Foundation, UMB was judged the “best building” in all of downtown. The public rated it number one in 8 of 10 categories such as: most friendly, good neighbor, high quality, responsive urban design, public amenities, architectural design. People especially love the oasis-like courtyard with its built-in user amenities, water, flowers, sculpture, and people friendly architectural details. It was recently cited as, “The Office Building of the Year” by BOMA. The monumental building fills the site to mend the urban fabric, is scaled to establish contextual relationships with surrounding buildings and creates an oasis-like courtyard to enrich the downtown environment. The initial phase is designed to present a completed image. |
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Programmatically required large floor plates are provided natural light through a "carved-out" central courtyard which in turn becomes an outdoor lobby for the building and civic space for downtown. The building's perimeter envelope provides continuity to existing street scale and together with the two-story red granite colonnade recalls the 19th century architecture formerly occupying the site. The engaged black stainless steel pilasters evoke an appropriate image of the building's occupant and merge traditional and new icons. |
| Perimeter elements such as built-in bollard lights incorporating pedestrian seats, lanterns at the recessed entrances, planters and sitting walls develop a friendly, pedestrian scale. The diagonal pedestrian entrance to the courtyard provides a seductive view from the busy street intersection. The courtyard is positioned to maximize sunlight during the lunch hour through separations between adjacent buildings. Pedestrian traffic through the courtyard is encouraged as it provides a "short cut" through the block and serves as entrance to both initial building as well as future tower. An oasis quality is created in this urban space with a basque of cork trees, fountain, multi-colored sculpture, sitting walls and curving stair which leads to another street. The courtyard has become a civic space and important element in the rejuvenation of downtown Kansas City. |
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