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

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.

d:SD Press

I’ve been away from the office for a couple of weeks, and while I was gone, the design:SD project found its way in front of thousands of eyeballs.

The terrific letter to the editor by Sandy Dickenson (Vermillion architect and design:SD team member) has really made the rounds in good old South Dakota. So far, it’s appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Watertown Public Opinion, Yankton Press and Dakotan, Mitchell Daily Republic and the Corsica Globe. There are probably more that I’m unaware of–please leave a post in the comments if you know of another publication, or if you have a copy or link to the letter in electronic format in any publication. Thanks for your help!

I can’t say too much about this yet, but there is a group discussing the filming of a documentary on the design:SD process in the coming months. Very cool. We’ll keep you posted…

Joe Bartmann
The Rural Learning Center

Visioning Works Both Ways

Below is a letter written to a number of newspaper editors in South Dakota by design:SD team member Sandy Dickenson of Vermillion, SD.  Hope you enjoy it:

I recently had an opportunity to be a volunteer on the first “design:South Dakota” team. The team consisted of architects, engineers, planners and rural developers and was the result of collaboration between the Rural Learning Center, the South Dakota Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and others.  The community selected was Corsica, SD, population about 650.  The team of twelve spent nearly three days in Corsica living with host families.  We learned about the community one day, drew up visioning ideas the second day, presenting them to the community the third.  I think the townspeople were very pleased with the results.

The most surprising part of the exercise was what I learned.  I am unarguably citified but have spent a fair amount of time visiting many of the communities in South Dakota.  I thought I knew this state pretty well…….boy, was I wrong!  My vision of rural South Dakota was completely blown away.  Here’s what I learned:

Team Says Good Bye to Corsica (for now)

The “Original” d:SD Team (pictured l to r, back row first): Alan Wieskamp, Scott Anderson, Joe Bartmann, Eric Ambroson, Lindsey Karlson, Tom Reasoner, Sandy Dickenson and Jim Beddow. Not pictured: Mike Knutson, Terry Aaker and John Deppe.

We did it! We wrapped up the first ever design:SD charrette on Saturday May 19 with a presentation of 16 concept boards to the Corsica regional community. Take a look below:

We have a lot of sweat equity into these boards. Eleven team members spent two and a half days (and much of a couple nights) learning, sketching, designing and illustrating ideas and options for the future based on the many visions of the folks in the Corsica region.

Lots of local people put in tons of time and effort too. It was truly a mixing bowl, and an experience many of us will not forget. We’ll laminate the boards and put together a summary document for the Corsica community. We’ll be sure to get the edited copies of the presentation video (thanks Evan) to the community too.

Meet the Team

The first-ever design:South Dakota Team roster is official. Click here to meet the team.

There’s still time to join the team if you’re interested! Just visit the Join the Team page.

Planning Team members visit Milan, Minnesota

Eric Ambroson (pictured above, left) from Planning District III and I joined the Minnesota Design Team on their visit to the small town of Milan, MN (population 350) this past weekend. The visit was super! We gained invaluable experience that will help us launch design:SD here in our home state, and had the opportunity to help a remarkable little village. We also met and worked with 13 new friends on the MDT.

Big thanks to our new friends across the border for taking us in and treating us like locals, and a special thanks to my host in Milan, Joel Lund.

Joe Bartmann, The Rural Learning Center