08/18/2026
Main Street Futures: Alma, Kansas
ARCH 817 / ADS 7 Fall 2026
Kansas State University College of Architecture, Planning and Design
Every Main Street was once an experiment.
This historic photograph of Missouri Street captures Alma during a moment of extraordinary activity. Commerce, community, agriculture, and everyday life converged in a public realm that was both economic engine and civic stage. While the people, technologies, and industries have changed, a central question remains: How can a small town continue to reinvent itself without losing the qualities that make it unique?
Architecture can do more than provide buildings—it can help communities imagine their future.
This graduate design studio partners with the citizens of Alma, Kansas to explore how architecture can strengthen the identity, resilience, and vitality of a small Midwestern town. Working alongside entrepreneurs, civic leaders, educators, and historians, students will investigate Missouri Street as both a historic artifact and a platform for future realities.
Beginning with archival research at the Wabaunsee County Historical Museum and immersive fieldwork in Alma, students will study the town’s physical fabric alongside the stories, institutions, and relationships that continue to shape it. Through drawing, photography, mapping, interviews, and collaborative physical models, the studio will uncover opportunities for adaptive reuse, strategic infill, amended existing fabric, and new forms of civic life.
Rather than asking what buildings should be designed, the studio asks what future Alma should be capable of supporting. Students’ explorations become tools for testing ideas, convening conversations, and helping the community imagine multiple futures rather than simply suggesting a host of individual architectural proposals.
Can architecture help a small town remain unmistakably itself while continually becoming something new?
College of Architecture, Planning, and Design
K-State Architecture
Wabaunsee County Museum
