The Importance of Expertise in Creating and Supporting Municipal Cultural Growth

The City of Sioux Falls has provided support for nonprofit arts and cultural organizations for decades.  It was instrumental in the development of the Washington Pavilion, and continues to own the facility while leasing it to a nonprofit corporation that operates its performing, visual arts and science center.  It owns the Orpheum Theatre, home of …

From Drawing to Sculpture to… Restraint

An “Argument” For Changing How We Think About Buildings. Cover image: 1920s era graduate level work from Harold Spitznagel, illustrating a classical drawing approach to an elevation While not required reading in my own architectural education, I’ve often interfaced, usually in a joking manner, the analysis of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi of the …

SDSU Chicoine AME Renaming Ceremony

(Cover image courtesy of SDSU) Over the past weekend, South Dakota State University officially celebrated the naming of the Chicoine Architecture, Mathematics & Engineering Hall with a ceremony honoring the 19th President of SDSU. Serving as President from 2007–2016, David Chicoine was instrumental in the founding of the Department of Architecture in 2010 and believed …

Going Metro – Call for Art Proposals

With funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts and South Dakota Community Foundation, the Sioux Falls Design Center (SFDC) is hosting Going Metro, a program series designed to facilitate creative conversations about transportation as the City of Sioux Falls seeks to innovate its transit system. The Sioux Falls Design Center is seeking art …

The Power of Narrative in Design

Prevalent in several university architecture programs these days is an emphasis on the “narrative” in design. No, this doesn’t mean the technical narrative a mechanical engineer puts together (as enticing as engineering narratives might be). I’m talking about approaching design per the definition of a narrative, that is thinking of a building or project as …