Maple Hills Park in Overland Park, Kansas has won a Citation Award from AIA Kansas City for their annual Design Excellence Awards competition.
The project, centered on energy conservation, visitor well-being, and equitable community development, revitalized the park with a new mass-timber park shelter and restroom building. These upgrades create a supportive, accessible, and connected environment by reinforcing Overland Park’s strong sense of community.
The shelter’s use of cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels demonstrates how effective they can be for public park projects. CLT is a renewable resource that sequesters carbon. The panels are prefabricated, speeding up construction and reducing on-site waste and disruption, are durable and resilient, and bring a natural warmth and visual appeal that compliments the park’s outdoor setting while redefining its architectural character.
Combined with a rooftop solar array that provides most of the park’s electrical needs, Maple Hill Park’s new structures create sustainable, inclusive, and transformational public spaces for the community for years to come.
“We are pleased to announce a citation in the extra small category to SFS architecture for their work at Maple Hills Park. This was a humble project that had big goals; goals around energy use, equity, sustainability, community engagement.
The project incorporates technologies like solar and mass timber. Ultimately, it's restroom building and a shelter for a park, but we thought the project was well presented, had very elegant details, and even though the program was humble and the budget was obviously tight, we felt that they had succeeded in creating a transformational identity for this public park area.”
- David Hacin, FAIA – Jury member