Rolling in Deuel County

The design:South Dakota process is really a dance in three parts:

1. Preparation: getting ready for the team by beginning the dialogue in the community,
2. The Charrette: the intense three days where the team and community mix it up, and
3. Implementation: making the dreams and visions real.

Implementation is usually the toughest part. It’s easy to get fired up during the “big event,” but once the team leaves town it gets harder to keep the momentum going. Not so in Deuel County, at least so far. They’ve convened the “Big Meeting,” and more people keep jumping into the circle to make things happen. Very exciting.

Read all about it on the Digging into Deuel blog.

some d:SD love

The Reimagine Rural blog is shining some love on design:South Dakota. Check it out here.

Better images of the Boards

We’ve scanned the Deuel County vision boards, so the slideshow below has much better images. You can also check out the boards and other photos from the Deuel County charrette on Flickr.

The theme of our charrette this year became “Deuelities.” A play on ‘Deuel’ and ‘Duality.’ A duality is a relationship between two things, where both are different, but something is shared. That’s pretty much what we saw and heard in Deuel–several individual communities with identities of their own, but connected by a commonality or shared space and culture. County boundaries are certainly just imaginary political lines, but Deuel County communities have an opportunity for bigger things by connecting and working together.

The Deuel County Vision Boards

Here’s a quick look at the final boards from Saturday’s presentation in Clear Lake, SD. It was an exhaustively beautiful charrette. Thanks to all who helped make it happen. We’ll be posting more about the charrette here and on the Reimagine Rural blog.

The images in this slideshow aren’t top quality. We’ll be scanning the boards and rebuilding a better slideshow soon. Until then, hope you enjoy these.

(We’ve updated the slideshow with higher quality images of the boards. Check it out here.)

Meet the Deueling Team

Hello Deuel County! The design:SD team is 17 members strong and gearing up as we speak to head to Deuel on Wednesday. You can get a glimpse of who will be helping the Deuelites–just check out the team roster. (Of course, the roster is subject to change. It almost always does!)

Tom Reasoner and I will be co-leading the charrette this time around, with Larry Crane and Alan Weiskamp helping to make sense of the chaos in the design studio. Tom is the big picture seer. I’m more of the process-sergeant. Hopefully together we’re a lovely yin and yang.

An upfront thanks to all the sponsors making this charrette possible: Rural Learning Center in Howard, SD, American Institute of Architects-South Dakota, and Deuel Area Development Inc. Also thanks to the City of Clear Lake for providing a space to work and for a bunch of wonderful local volunteers who are really making this happen.

We haven’t even held our team orientation yet, but we already have co-MVP’s of this charette. Super props to Briana Hoffman and Lindsey Karlson for pulling it all together.

Cheers.
Joe Bartmann

Design:SD Heads to Deuel County this Week

The folks in Deuel County can expect a little extra excitement this week. A group of 18 architects, landscape architects, engineers, planners, and community development professionals will spend three days in Deuel at the end of this week (March 26-28) for Design: South Dakota.

Design: South Dakota, now in its third year, is a is a new way to help rural communities across South Dakota create a better future by design, where architects, engineers, planners and community developers volunteer to help South Dakota’s small towns gather and illustrate ideas for their future.

The 3-plus day design:SD event, called a “charrette,” is described by project leaders as a “mixing bowl” of local knowledge, ideas and visions for the future, with the expertise and experience of professionals from outside the community.

The Deuel County community has been preparing for the event since the fall of 2008, when they were selected as the next Design: SD community. Recently, Deuel Area Development (a local non-profit development corporation) has hosted a series of roundtable discussions leading up the charrette. The topics have included: agriculture, main street business, healthcare, recreation, young families, and uses for the former school for the blind property. The information harvested from these conversations was sent to Design team members to help them prepare and understand the community a bit before the three day event.

“The design charrette is the shortest portion of the process, when you consider the work that must be done before and after the event,” said Joe Bartmann, co-leader of the d:SD, Project Deuel County. “The ideas that are illustrated have, in many ways, been long in the making for a community—and when the design team leaves it is up to the community to follow-through and make the ideas a reality.”

If you’re a Deuel County resident, or simply interested in learning more about Design:SD, you’re invited to several community events during the charrette. Events, times, and locations are listed below.

• Thursday, March 26th, 2:00 pm–Meet and Greet the Design Team–Alibi in Gary, SD
• Thursday, March 26th, 6:00 pm–Community Visioning Dinner–Clear Lake Community Center
• Friday, March 27th, 2:00 pm–Public Feedback Session–Clear Lake Community Center
• Saturday, March 28th, 10:00 am–Community Presentation–Clear Lake Community Center

SD Architect Magazine

The first ever issue of SD Architect magazine hit the stands this fall, and a story about the first design:SD charrette in Corsica made the cut. Thanks to Tom and Sandy for pulling it together. If you’d like a copy of the magazine, call the AIA SD office at 605-334-2422.

Deueling

The site of d:SD community 3 is official: design:SD will be heading to Deuel County, SD next. We’ll plan a community design charrette in Fall 2008 or Spring 2009 (we’ll figure out the date soon).It will be tricky–our first crack at a regional approach (at least three communities at once: Gary, Clear Lake and Lake Cochran).

We had our annual summer barbecue for the d:SD team in the Beddow’s backyard on July 24 (and managed to somehow pull it off without Mrs. Beddow!) and then a meeting with a local group from Deuel County earlier this week. We’ve officially accepted the invitation from Deuel County. Now comes the hard work for both of us! We’ll keep you posted!

our agenda from the bbq--part work and part party!

Deuel First Look

The fine folks in Deuel County, SD have invited the design:SD team for a visit. We’ve been dicussing holding a charrette in Deuel for a couple months now, and this “pre-visit” will help us in making that decision.

All-in-all, nine d:SD team members made the trek on July 8. Led by our official tour guide, d:SD founding team member Jim Beddow, we visited a few sites in and around Gary, SD and then headed toward Clear Lake to visit that town and a City park at it’s nearby namesake. See more photos from the trip here.

The Sisseton Boards

We’ll be bringing the laminated concept boards back to the folks in Sisseton next week. Below is the final presentation we used last month. You can see a bunch of pictures from design:SD Project Sisseton here.