The community of Waukee, Iowa is bringing public art and infrastructure together to realize the full potential of the tri-county Raccoon River Valley Trail and its exceptional 72-mile trail loop.…
Each year, AIA Iowa celebrates Iowa architects and architecture by recognizing April as a statewide Architecture Month.…
The infrastructure of our towns and cities – buildings, homes, roadways, buildings, land use –make up what we know as the built environment. These human-made environments are where we often live and work, and they strongly influence how we behave and feel, and can even impact our physical and mental well-being.…
Long-standing research has shown how the simple act of viewing or visiting an outdoor landscape benefits our health. It’s why corporations value the “corner office” and why picture windows have become a staple in our homes.…
My passion for historic preservation began when I was young. An admiration for the beauty of old buildings and the extensive details of these structures ultimately led me to pursue a career as an urban planner.…
Crafting a lighting design solution that balances vision, art and science to meet the needs of many users.
To the general public, lighting design might seem like an engineering discipline utilizing simple, utilitarian sets of decisions about where to place fixtures and how to control them.…
We instinctively know our neighborhoods and communities are better when people have ready access to areas where they can walk, run, play, gather, and interact with the natural environment.…
There is music between the trees in Water Works Park. Hugging the bank of Raccoon River near downtown Des Moines, Iowa, the 1,500-acre riverside woodland area is one of the country’s largest urban parks, an outdoor oasis in the heart of the city.…
Eleven graduate students from nine universities across seven states and two countries came together Nov. 5-8, 2019 for RDG’s ninth annual Design Residency.
Residents were charged with solving a challenging design problem: reimagine and reinvigorate the eastern end of Des Moines’ Douglas Avenue Corridor, a section of the city with a highly diverse yet low-income population, deteriorating infrastructure, lack of walkability and accessibility and numerous struggling businesses.…
Thanks to a building and manufacturing boom in the late 1800s and early 1900s, plenty of big industrial warehouses, factories, and similar structures stand in urban centers and small cities across the Midwest. Many now sit empty; stoic relics of a bygone time that present challenges to their communities.…
