April 4, 2011

Omaha North High: Merging Tradition and Technology

RDG's Jeff Dolezal was recently interviewed for a video project by The "Nebraska Loves Their Public Schools" organization, spearheaded by the Sherwood Foundation in an effort to tell the story of how Nebraska's public schools are using innovative programs and practices to affect change in the public school system.

December 2, 2008

Facility Planning for Diverse Outdoor Recreation Needs

Located west of Des Moines, Iowa, Waukee is a rapidly growing suburban community of approximately 11,000 residents. The city's population is expected to swell to nearly 13,000 by 2010. This population explosion, as well as an increased interest from residents to participate in outdoor activities, has established an urgent need for the city to plan for future available recreation opportunities to maintain a premier level of service within the community.

January 2, 2008

A Community Affair Outdoor Recreation Planning for Growing Communities

Located just east of Des Moines, Iowa, Pleasant Hill is a growing suburban community of nearly 7,000 residents. Over the last ten years Pleasant Hill has experienced a rapid growth rate of nearly 40%. This rise in population coupled with increased participation in outdoor recreation programs created a clear need for additional recreation facilities in order for the City of Pleasant Hill to continue providing the same level of recreation services to the community.

August 20, 2005

Adelante South Omaha! Forward South Omaha

By Martin Shukert, FAICP and Patrick Dunn, ASLA
Published in Landscape Architect and Specifier News
August, 2005

South Omaha, established in 1885 as a land development project of the Union Stockyards Company, has been a gateway of economic opportunity for people of many ethnicities and cultures during its history. The stockyards and the industries that grew up around them created jobs for central and eastern European Immigrants to America, who often settled in surrounding neighborhoods. The South Omaha Business District was the center of this burgeoning community, and grew into a commercial district second in importance only to downtown Omaha.

August 16, 2005

Facility Futures

by: Al Oberlander, AIA, Jack Patton, AIA, Kevin Stubbs, AIA, and Paul Klein, AIA
Published in Athletic Business Magazine
August 2005

The long-term success of the facility you're planning today starts with your ability to imagine the impact of tomorrow's technology.

It's a typical morning at the recreation center of the not-too-distant future. At 6 a.m., a man approaches the center's entrance scanner. The door opens immediately because the scanner reads the computer chip implanted in the man's arm, identifying him as a member. Inside, he is greeted warmly by a robot: "Good morning, Mr. Allen. We missed you last week. Follow me, please." Mr. Allen is off to the locker room.

January 2, 2004

"Public Participation Helping to Shape Public Places"

by: Debra L. Smith, AIA, AICP
Published in Iowa Commerce
December 2003/January 2004

High quality public places are an important part of the quality of life in healthy communities. Common places, such as parks, plazas, community buildings, and recreation trails offer places for the full cross-section of a community's citizens to gather to celebrate, play, relax, learn, and sometimes to mourn, such as was the case with 9/11.

Des Moines and West Des Moines residents are fortunate to have two new facilities that add to the dynamic quality of the metro area's public realm: the improvements to Gray's Lake, including a quarter-mile pedestrian bridge, and the Raccoon River Nature Lodge.

January 1, 2004

"Sound Bodies, Sound Minds, Fabulous Facilities: Campus Recreation Buildings for the Twenty-First Century"

by: Ann Sobiech Munson, CSI CDT

Published in Iowa Commerce

December 2003/January 2004

New recreation and athletic facilities at today's academic institutions go well beyond the armories and field houses built during the last century. Through thoughtful design and collaborative processes, these spaces have become centers for athletic program excellence, focal points for student recruiting, and hubs of community involvement.

May 2, 2003

"The Value of Sustainable Design"

by: Kevin Nordmeyer, AIA
Published in Iowa Commerce
April/May 2003

Energy

It's interesting that building in the first six decades of the twentieth century and before were typically designed to utilize daylight to illuminate their interiors. With the oil embargo of the '70s came an era of energy reduction in buildings through minimizing window sizes of existing and new buildings because of poor single-pane glass technology and through maximizing the efficiency of the building through increased R-values, HVAC systems, etc. For the last 30 years of the twentieth century, most buildings, with some exceptions, have become insulated from the environment rather than engaged with it because of this focus on efficiency through improved lighting, HVAC, and building envelope technologies.

April 2, 2003

"Green Design: Utility Poles and Prairie Grass"

by: C.C. Sullivan
Published in Architecture magazine
April 2003

RDG / Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities office and Training Facility, Ankeny, Iowa

Occupying a transitional moment between restored tall-grass prairie and a grid of power poles, an office and training facility for utility workers near Des Moines synthesizes the centuries-old story of its Midwestern land: the sod huts of early settlers, the agrarian grid imposed on a rambling open plain, even modern sprawl. Drawing from historical building patterns and the Jeffersonian awes, Des Moines-based RDG delineates a truly prairie-style experiment in sustainable design.