2019 Nebraska/Dakotas Chapter Annual Award Winners
Congratulations to our 2019 Annual Award Winners!
AWARD OF EXCELLENCE
Project: Leslie’s Healing Garden at the Fred and Pamela Buffett Cancer Center
Category: Design (Built)
Location: Omaha, NE
Firm: HDR Inc.
This new, unique space allows the memory of Leslie Faith to live on as an essential part of UNMC’s Healing Arts Program. The Healing Arts Program aims to have a significant impact on each patient’s mental health. The therapeutic elements – nature, water, and white noise – within the Garden are designed within a series of circles representing the cycle of life. The hierarchies of different sized circles overlap one another to represent significant moments in our lives. This outdoor oasis is home to forty different species of plants, varying growth media depths, a calming water feature, and a variety of seating options. Being at the epicenter of research and clinical care, the Garden allows patients, staff, and visitors to immerse themselves within nature and art. The Garden is also a stress-reducing environment, improves a sense of well-being, promotes an increase in physical activity, and allows patients a place of quiet respite before and after treatments.
CATEGORY I - DESIGN BUILT
Project: Educare Flint
Honor Award
Location: Flint, MI
Firm: RDG Planning & Design
Educare Flint is the first early childhood education school built by the Educare network in Michigan. Highly skilled teaching staff and family support specialists connect children, parents, and community residents with needed services. Using integrated site design and architecture to support the concurrent delivery of both childcare and education, the center is a promising model for optimizing learning during the vital early years. During the project’s visioning and programming phase, members of the Flint community challenged the school’s design to celebrate Flint’s accomplishments in innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, self-determination, and industry. There was a desire to celebrate the racial, economic, and cultural diversity of Flint while remaining sensitive to the neighborhood’s context and the City’s past.
Project: Arc of Dreams
Honor Award
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Firm: Confluence
The Arc of Dreams creates a signature piece of art over the Big Sioux River in downtown Sioux Falls to illustrate what we want to be – a unique and thriving modern city on the prairie. The project aims to reinforce the community’s commitment to the arts and draw visitors to the thriving downtown business district and Big Sioux River Greenway. The monumental Arc of Dreams is a tribute to dreamers of the past and present and inspire dreamers for generations to come. A 15-foot gap at the center of the Arc of Dreams, 85 feet above the river, represents the leap of faith dreamers take to see their dreams come true.
Project: City Center
Merit Award
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Firm: Stockwell Engineers, Inc.
City Center has successfully taken an undesirable piece of downtown Sioux Falls and made it into a beautiful and functional part of the downtown landscape. A site that was previously only used for parking and loitering is now a place for residents and visitors to enjoy a beautiful and functioning streetscape and brings them to a site providing community services as well as a safe and accessible park for everyone to enjoy.
Project: Downtown Larchwood Streetscape
Merit Award
Location: Larchwood, IA
Firm: Stockwell Engineers, Inc.
The city of Larchwood, Iowa, is a community of about 900 people and is considered the northwestern-most community in the state of Iowa. The new streetscape provides an eye-catching corridor and promotes more walkability between the businesses with wider sidewalks and shade from street trees. The city has truly embraced the improvements and has now started a façade improvement program along the corridor to promote businesses upgrading their storefronts to complement the new streetscape.
Project: Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society - National Headquarters
Merit Award
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Firm: Stockwell Engineers, Inc.
This campus design is unique because of the many different programs made available to campus visitors at one site. Programs that were added to the campus as part of this project include an outdoor amphitheater, two outdoor patios, a prayer garden, a native prairie meadow, an expanded accessible sidewalk network, campus lighting, as well as parking lot expansions. A special feature of this design is the central pond. The pond acts as a central focal point with fountains while also capturing and filtering stormwater runoff from the campus.
Project: Levitt Shell Sioux Falls
Merit Award
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Firm: Stockwell Engineers, Inc.
The purpose of the project was to provide a new and unique experience to people living in and visiting downtown Sioux Falls. The Levitt Shell Sioux Falls project delivers an outdoor concert venue as part of a National Grant Program that has provided similar projects to seven other cities across the United States. The Levitt Shell Sioux Falls provides a beautiful space for people to gather for free concerts that is easily accessible and welcoming to the whole community.
Project: The Fargo Project: World Garden Commons
Merit Award
Location: Fargo, ND
Firm: LAND Elements, Inc.
World Commons assists City of Fargo, lead ecological artist Jackie Brookner, and other engaged citizens in the designing, bidding, and construction administration of a multifunctional commons in an 18-acre stormwater basin. The project also laid the groundwork for the community to continue to explore connections, local expertise, and passions while learning about its diverse cultures and creating an ecological commons.
CATEGORY II - DESIGN UNBUILT
Project: Thompson Park
Honor Award
Location: Overland Park, KS
Firm: RDG Planning & Design
The inspiration for Thompson Park came from Overland Park’s aviation and transportation history, as well as the past of the park’s major donor. When Overland Park was first established, it was home to ‘airfields’–just west of this park site. Visitors from Kansas City came to Overland Park to witness the spectacle of flight for the first time. While visiting Overland Park, the City’s founder convinced many of them to move to town to enjoy living a life in the vast openness of the countryside, airfields, and aviation history. Thompson Park is the only park space within the downtown and must be celebrated and improved to meet the current and projected demands of the City.
Project: North Dakota Governor’s Residence
Merit Award
Location: Bismarck, ND
Firm: LAND Elements, Inc.
The site plan for the new Governor’s Residence links it to the historic Capitol Mall, as called for by the 1920 Morell and Nichols plan, and to accommodate public and state gatherings. The proposed plan includes an appropriate landscape for the gubernatorial residence of North Dakota and improvements to the Capitol Grounds consistent with the Capitol Grounds Planning Commission policies. The project proposes to re-landscape the former site and improve the current residence at a level like the first. The project will be a culmination of work by architects, engineers, planners, and landscape architects.
Project: Sioux Valley Courtyard Classrooms
Student Honor Award
Location: Sioux Valley, SD
Student: Payton Schafers
The Courtyard Classroom is an unroofed area completely enclosed by 12-14’ walls. Currently, the site acts only as a drainage area for the building’s large roof. The project integrates green infrastructure practices through the inclusion of rain gardens, permeable pavement, and a small retention pond. In addition, the sensory/pollinator garden focuses on using perennials native to South Dakota. These simple design practices show students the relevance for caring for the environment. The Courtyard Classroom brings a diversity of core subjects beyond school walls to help students and faculty engage with the environment.
CATEGORY III - PLANNING & ANALYSIS
Project: Grand Forks Downtown Action Plan
Merit Award
Location: Grand Forks, ND
Firm: RDG Planning & Design
Downtown Grand Forks experienced catastrophic flooding over twenty years ago, where significant buildings were destroyed or damaged. The community arose from the devastation through new development: a new town square, new open spaces where buildings had been demolished, and new streetscapes. The project team was selected to provide concepts to help guide future decision making related to new development downtown, streetscape upgrades, a renovated town square, and updated park spaces. The purpose of the plan was to create actionable concepts for downtown streetscapes and parks that can be easily implemented by Grand Forks.
Project: Fargo[fication]
Student Honor Award
Location: Fargo, ND
Student: Austin Schmidt
As the Fargo-Moorhead metro area continues to develop outward, the question of whether we can redraw the community’s attention back inward to the open spaces that have become forgotten. The project aimed to focus on the now neglected areas of Fargo, retrofitting these areas deemed best suitable through a series of collective and analytical methods. Using housing developments, slow-speed roads, existing bike and bus routes, sports facilities, and existing community attractions, three areas were selected as best suitable on a synthesized regional map. GIS spatial mapping diagrams highlight the best and least considerable areas for new place-making opportunities.
Project: Futurescapes
Student Honor Award
Location: Zagreb, Croatia
Student Team: Emily Hopfauf, Nathaniel Horvath, Matthew Keller, Amy Kronbeck, Nhi Nguyen, Austin Schmidt, Zach Unruh
This design competition student group developed a comprehensive and systematic approach to urban planning, showcasing student knowledge, technological skills, and collaboration with the academic community and involved agencies. Tackling the topic of Democracy in the Landscape, the students aimed to provide an equal access landscape, by reconnecting portions of the City of Zagreb separated due to the river corridor, promoting multifunctional recreation and tourism ideas using abandoned infrastructure, all without disturbing the natural ecosystem.
Project: Brookings Transect
Student Merit Award
Location: Brookings, SD
Student Team: Hailey Bruckner, Will Hetherington, Jake Wolfe
The primary objective of the project was to find insight as to why Brookings was developed where it is, as well as to determine in which direction future development should continue. The goal of the transect study was to illustrate the breadth of the local landscape and to encapsulate the diverse habitats, both natural and cultural. By examining the landscape, one can see how the creation and development of that landscape essentially influences further development of our growing world.
CATEGORY V - COMMUNICATIONS
Project: Greening America’s Capitals & Communities
Merit Award
Firm: Stockwell Engineers, Inc.
Greening America’s Communities (and Capitals) is an EPA program created to help communities implement a vision of environmentally friendly neighborhoods that incorporate green infrastructure and other sustainable design strategies. The program does so by providing small communities with the tools and knowledge to make sustainable and responsible projects a possibility for their communities. The landscape architect was hired by the EPA to follow out a specific process for six U.S. communities across five states.
The landscape architect then created initial design strategies that addressed site-specific opportunities and constraints. They oversaw organizing and facilitating multiple stakeholder and public meetings to gather community input, educate, and spur excitement and support. Designs were then refined into schematic plans that included “next steps,” implementation strategies, and available funding sources. The entire process and all design strategies were then presented to the individual communities as a complete report intended to catalyze a larger planning process for the pilot neighborhoods as well as the greater community.
