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DeBruce Hall wins tops honors in AIA Central States Region design awards

Adding to a growing list of accolades since it opened last summer, Paul & Linda DeBruce Hall received top honors in the annual AIA Central States Design Awards program.

DeBruce Hall is a home for multiple academic and administrative departments on the Kansas City Art Institute campus. The building is unique in the larger landscape of campus; it is one of just a few buildings that every student will pass through during their time at KCAI.

The KCAI campus is a neighbor to the city’s most prominent art museums – the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. The design of DeBruce Hall was scaled to compliment both museums and the campus, as well as the historic neighborhoods surrounding KCAI.

The interior hinges around a public atrium that connects the building’s various activities and user groups. Classrooms and administrative operations are placed around the interior perimeter of the building to connect students and staff with the exterior landscape and context.

The AIA Central States chapter is comprised of firms and architects from Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. More than 240 projects were entered into this year’s program. Congratulations to the team at KCAI and all of our project partners!