By Juliana A. Torres Staff Writer The Kissimmee Commission approved the design of a 30-foot, cube-shaped fountain Tuesday that will be featured in a plaza on Ruby Avenue, heralding a sculpture that will be part of the new Lakefront Park as a future iconic landmark for Kissimmee.

Artist's rendering/JEFRË

Sculptor Jefre Manuel’s “Rain,” a cube-shaped fountain, was the design chosen to be part of the city of Kissimmee’s Lakefront Park improvement project.

Local artist Jefre Manuel, who goes by JEFRË in the art world, designed the sculpture, called “Rain,” which was selected from a short list of three design ideas that have been on display in Kissimmee City Hall.

“It’s an iconic piece of art,” Scott Brooks, chairman for the project selection committee, said. “It really represents us, our mark on our lake, on Kissimmee and, for future generations, why we’re here, why we do what we do. This will be something that people will identify with the lakefront and Kissimmee.”

In the designs for the Kissimmee Lakefront Park, Ruby Plaza will serve as the main entrance, with the art sculpture as a focus. The city of Kissimmee asked that designs be highly visible from the downtown and throughout the lakefront, create a place for future city events and everyday socialization and weave the city’s history, culture and relationship to its waterfront.

In Manuel’s design, water will flow over the 30-foot cube, pausing at intervals to allow people to walk through a hidden door inside the hollow structure. The intensity of the water’s volume would increase at 3 p.m. every day, to mimic Central Florida’s wet-season climate, Manuel said. He also told the commission that the design was meant to reflect the history of architecture in the area.

The sculpture was inspirational for lakefront project planners, who will be working to integrate the art into the designs for the park itself.

“Your park designers said, ‘This is the one that – when we looked at it – it got our creative juices flowing,’” Brooks said.

The design also included an underground element that visitors could access from inside the cube. A tunnel under the sculpture would allow residents to stand underneath a pool of water and see activity going on above, and vice versa.

That piece probably won’t be included in the final design of the fountain, as it would exceed the $750,000 budget set for the project, officials said. The second “hidden” cube might be incorporated another way within the plaza without putting it underground, Manuel said.

The sculpture could be accompanied by music and lights at night and could even be used to play movies at the lakefront, with the water turned off and the film projected off the glass, Manuel said. He also said he hopes to use recycled stored rainwater, rather than waste the valuable resource.

Brooks said the sculpture had great potential as a place of social convergence, adding that the committee imagined residents saying, “Meet me at the cube,” in the future.

“For the people’s park, this is what we’re looking for,” Commissioner Jerry Gemskie said. “This is something that I would say, ‘We have to go see it, because it’s that good.’ The other two are good, but I can wait a day or two before I saw it.”

Manuel, a resident of the Central Florida for the past 15 years, is from Kissimmee and lives in Winter Park now. The team he put together for the project consists of local suppliers and designers, which – while it wasn’t a requirement in the bid process – was a bonus to the committee, Brooks said.

Parks and Recreation Director Dan Loubiér said the city was fortunate to work with the emerging artist. Manuel has won eight of the 15 public artwork competitions he has entered.

“It’s because a lot of the stuff I do is very contextually based,” Manuel told commissioners. “Everything I do, hopefully, is going to create a legacy within (one’s) own town.”

After working on several projects across the nation, Manuel said it’s “nice to come back home.”

Commissioner Cheryl Grieb was part of the selection committee of community leaders throughout Kissimmee who chose the final proposal. The committee unanimously selected Manuel’s sculpture over the others.

“It was amazing that we all came to such a consensus, but we did,” she said. In total, the committee received 148 proposals for the lakefront sculpture.

“Kissimmee is doing something great in that artists from around the world want to come here to be able to express their art here for everyone to see,” Brooks said.