PWA teamed with the City of St. Joseph, the Missouri Department of Conservation, and engineering and landscape design consultants to design the $4.5 million nature center that is the “crown jewel” of St. Joseph’s riverfront development. The design for the Remington Nature Center includes approximately 5,000 SF of exhibit space, an auditorium, classrooms, an aquarium, a cafe, offices, and outdoor viewing areas. The project team incorporated sustainable design processes and materials into the 15,000-SF facility. From the beginning, the team sought to develop a landscape/site and building design that would harmonize with the project’s overall goals and maximize the natural beauty of the site. Working closely with the client, they found ways to reduce energy loads, conserve water, minimize waste, and promote the health and satisfaction of the facility’s users and visitors while furthering the goals of the City of St. Joseph and other organizations that would use the building. As a result, the building’s orientation, layout, and form are well integrated with the surrounding landscape.  The Nature Center’s location in the Missouri River floodplain required that it be raised above the 100-year floodplain. The PWA team’s solution was to raise the building on 12- to 13-foot piers and provide flood-proof doors on the lower-level storage rooms.

Sustainable Design Highlights:

• Orienting the landscape and building elements to take advantage of the site’s unique climate in order to maximize energy conservation
• Use of regionally appropriate landscape and building materials
• Use of ecologically responsible (renewable, recyclable, local, natural, environmentally sensitive) materials and techniques
• Management of stormwater infiltration on-site
• Increase light level efficiency and energy consumption.

Design Team Members:
McClure Engineering Company – Structural Engineering
CM Engineering, Inc. – MEP Engineering
Vireo (formerly Patti Banks Associates) – Landscape Architecture
E.L. Crawford Construction, Inc. – Contractor