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

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.

Much Ado About Midstates

A handful of design:SD team members headed a little south yesterday to present at the Midstates Conference 2008 in South Sioux City, Nebraska. We shared with folks from communities in Iowa, South Dakota and Nebraska how we put together the design:SD project and launched it in Corsica last spring. We co-presented with the Iowa Architectural Foundation’s Community Design Program.

Here are some shots of Joe and Eric presenting, along with our new Iowan friend Dale. Others from d:SD who attended were Sandy Dickenson, Tom Reasoner, Lindsey Karlson and Alan Weiskamp. Rey Gonzalez is one of the event organizers.

Here’s the powerpoint we showed yesterday. Thanks to Midstates organizers for letting us play!