Kansas City firm chosen as Green in the City winner

A Kansas City architectural firm is the winner of Omaha by Design’s “Green in the City” contest.

El Dorado Inc. will design the urban green space adjacent to the new Bluebarn Theatre at 10th and Pacific Streets in Omaha. David Dowell, Principal-in-Charge at El Dorado, says the firm’s proposal includes a distinctive roof for the Theatre that takes advantage of storm water runoff.

“It’s a folded-plane roof, and it pushes water in a very purposeful way one way or another, and so we thought rather than just put that water in to the gutter and put it in to the storm water system, that we would actually grab a hold of that water and store part of it and use other parts of it to circulate throughout the green space site for landscape benefit, and just for acoustical benefit and for experiential benefit.”

Dowell says the goal is to create a flexible and open site for the Bluebarn Theatre.  He says the next phase of the project involves looking at design and programming.

The work is scheduled for completion by next summer.