Prairefire at Lionsgate in the southern suburb of the metro Kansas City was a huge mixed use development that Fred Merrill has had the vision for this area for a decade. He wanted a place for the arts and the prairie to be celebrated.
Structurflex’s scope of work was to engineer, fabricate, and install graphic panels on the parking garage twofold: First to provide a screening device for the garage in the center of this development; secondly, celebrate the arts with these large printed photographic panels of the prairie. The original idea was to change of these panels to celebrate different local artists every couple of years, but the quality of the printed images was so popular and have withstood wind forces and hot southern sun that these printed images have remained.
Structurflex worked with the architect in detailing the attachment details properly, analyzing the wind loading and prestress, calculating the openness factor of the parking structure to maintain an open parking structure (eliminating the need for mechanical system) and providing a mockup sample of the printed image panel. The Tensile Mesh used on this project was a metallic silver fabric mesh. This created a dramatic, shimmering effect to the printed image with the silver showing through the printed clouds. This is a very cost effective façade screening system is only a fraction of the cost of a perforated metal or metal mesh façade system.