This month and next, Blueprint South Dakota will continue spotlighting the entries in the 2025 Design Awards competition. AIA South Dakota members again proved their creativity and problem-solving skills with beautifully functional work, on display in communities across South Dakota and beyond. Each installment in this series introduces readers to a different project, in the design team’s own words. As part of every entry form, AIA SD asked submitters to provide a “long description” that addressed the design intent and its progression. We invited submitters to go beyond the stats to show the value the project added for their client or community. In turn, they detailed the problems the project solved, told how their process made the most of hidden opportunities, and described the ways the design supports the client or community through form and function.
Convention Center Canopy Column Cladding
The basics
- Firm: TSP, Inc.
- Client: City of Sioux Falls – Sioux Falls Convention Center
- Category: Small Project
- Location: Sioux Falls, S.D.
The story
Battered by decades of Midwest winters and the relentless bite of ice melt, the precast columns of the Sioux Falls Convention Center stood weathered and worn. Rather than simply patch the wounds, the design team embraced an elegant and enduring solution: a structural embrace of carbon-fiber hidden beneath cast-stone panels.
Drawing inspiration from the horizontal rhythm of nearby architecture, the new cladding echoes the language of ribbon windows and metal siding, stitching together the arena, convention center, and events center. Each column, once scarred and failing, now stands renewed—both stronger and more beautiful—anchored in the campus’s evolving story.
More projects in the series
Click to view a video of all 22 entries in the 2025 AIA South Dakota Design Awards.
