Prairie Park Pavilion was designed and built by third-year University of Kansas Architecture students to support the Prairie Park Nature Center's mission to promote conservation of the natural world through hands-on environmental and conservation education. Conservation and sustainability go hand in hand, and with this in mind, the shade pavilion was designed and constructed almost entirely of repurposed materials that included retired utility poles from the local power company, aluminum street signs from surrounding municipalities, and limestone seating from renovations at KU’s Memorial Stadium. The pavilion overlooks the remnant prairie, which is one of the last unaltered prairie landscapes in the region, and students took inspiration from natural patterns in the landscape during the early design phase of the project. The pavilion will host youth camps, movies, weddings, educational programming, and more.

Numerous community partners donated time and materials to make the project possible, and working with the repurposed materials created many constraints and opportunities. Taper-cut utility poles were identified as the most cost-effective approach to span over the limestone seating and ADA accessible circulation aisle. However, the transition from sloping roof to columns delivered a structural load that could not be resolved at the connection between beam and column, and the introduction of knee braces to support the roof presented an opportunity to add expressive architectural features made from galvanized steel. In other locations, galvanized steel plate connections compliment the heavy timber framing with minimal disruption.

Galvanized components provided a durable and customizable element to structurally resolve the reclaimed materials, and, through the project, architecture students learned steel detailing by collaborating with engineers and fabricators and preparing components for the galvanizing process. Simply put, high-strength galvanized steel connections were the sole reason that repurposed materials could be used to create the shade pavilion.