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A Civic Landmark Built from Kansas City’s Love of Literature
Challenge: When the Kansas City Public Library added a parking garage across from its downtown Central Library, it had an opportunity to make the new structure feel like more than a place to park. The Library wanted the garage to contribute to the surrounding Library District, celebrate Kansas City’s connection to literature and create something the community could see itself in. What began as a modest graphic treatment quickly grew into a much bigger idea: turn the façade into a row of enormous books. Bringing that vision to life meant translating familiar book covers to an architectural scale while working within the realities of the garage itself, including budget, structure, natural light and long-term durability.
Year
2004Location
Kansas City, MissouriPartners
BNIM, HOK, JE Dunn
Solution: DI worked alongside the Kansas City Public Library, JE Dunn and the broader project team to transform the south façade into the Community Bookshelf, a collection of 22 book spines standing nearly 26 feet tall. Rather than selecting the titles behind closed doors, the Library invited Kansas Citians to weigh in, creating a bookshelf shaped by the community it represents.
Making a book recognizable from the sidewalk is one thing. Making it recognizable when it is several stories tall is another. DI used professionally photographed rare books as the starting point, digitally modifying the artwork and typography to recreate the character and detail of each cover at an entirely new scale. The finished graphics were printed on translucent materials and integrated into an aluminum support structure engineered specifically for the garage.
“The Library is, in many ways, an ambassador for the community and one which shows that Kansas City has a fun side."
– Jonathan Kemper, chairman emeritus of Commerce Bank, Kansas City Region
The design also had to function as part of a working building. Clear Plexiglas windows were incorporated through the center of the books to allow daylight into the parking structure without interrupting the larger bookshelf composition. Materials and attachment methods were carefully considered to withstand the elements while keeping the underlying structure and hardware from distracting from the artwork.
The storytelling extends beyond the books themselves. Along the street, enlarged imagery drawn from historic 1920s postcards connects the installation to the block’s earlier life, adding another layer of Kansas City history to a project already rooted in the community.
The Community Bookshelf has become one of downtown Kansas City’s most recognizable landmarks. What could have remained an ordinary parking garage instead became public art, wayfinding and a larger-than-life invitation to visit the Library. Most importantly, the bookshelf demonstrates what placemaking can do with an otherwise overlooked piece of infrastructure. By combining community participation, environmental graphic design, engineering and specialty fabrication, the Kansas City Public Library created something distinctly local: a parking garage that tells you exactly where you are before you ever walk through the Library’s doors.
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