Great Spaces, Great Places
By Bobbie Koch (Sicangu Lakota) Associate AIA & AICAE, and Valeriah Big Eagle (Ihanktonwan) Ed.D., M.S.Ed. Since the 1940s, our Lakota Uncis – our grandmothers – advocated to bring a Native American Community Center to Mniluzahan Otunwahe (Rapid City). For the past few years, He Sapa Otipi – Community Center for the People of the …
Continue reading “Design in the Hills: Friday Presentation and Charette Recap”
By Cassie Pospishil, Associate AIA Thursday afternoon, attendees visited the Accelerator Building, the Monument, and Memorial Park. All of these are located in the downtown Rapid City area. The Accelerator Building Though there were many aspects of the Accelerator Building that were stunning, one main theme I would like to elaborate on is the indoor-outdoor …
Continue reading “Design in the Hills: Thursday Afternoon Recap”
One of AIA SD’s newest traditions is celebrating newly licensed architects in the state of South Dakota. This year at Design in the Hills, we had the honor of recognizing newly licensed architect, Megan Walz, AIA, from JLG Architects! Congratulations on your achievement! Earning an architectural license is no easy task, and it takes a …
Continue reading “AIA SD Celebrates Newly Licensed Architect at Design in the Hills”
By Tanya Olson, ASLA, SD Section Chair, Nebraska/Dakotas Chapter ASLA Our second stop on “tour day” for Design in the Hills 2022 was the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology campus where we toured a new construction project and a building renovation project. South Dakota Mines Pearson Alumni and Conference Center Jenn Johnson, AIA …
Continue reading “Design in the Hills: Thursday Morning Recap, Part II”
By Terri L. Miller, AIA, NCARB, CDT Design in the Hills is one of my favorite AIA South Dakota Events. I would encourage anyone to join if they are able. Every year, the tours are either in Rapid City or the surrounding area. There are usually some very interesting and different things to tour, and …
Continue reading “Design in the Hills: Thursday Morning Recap, Part I”
The un-conference Design in the Hills event was certainly a change for the committee and the architects in the area who have enjoyed our annual gathering. We hope that everyone has enjoyed the trip down memory lane as we recapped each year of Design in the Hills since 2011 via Blueprint South Dakota blogposts throughout the month of July. On behalf of the committee, we want to extend our greatest thank you to our sponsors for making this year’s virtual platform a possibility. We appreciate the agility to adapt as we brainstormed the possibilities for this year and patience as we navigated a different approach to celebrating the built environment.
In 2019, Rapid City made its biennial appearance as the host of Design in the Hills. Because of the numerous technologically innovative projects recently completed in Rapid City, the theme of 2019 was “Innovation RC.” The Design in the Hills Committee also decided to try something new in 2019 – a Call for Submissions throughout the region for built works and current research in the field of design innovation.
Our 2018 Design in the Hills event took us to the southern hills of Custer. Our theme that year centered around the concept of New Ruralism. New Ruralism can be described as an evolving rural planning approach rooted in respect for cultural heritage and empowerment of residents to actively participate in shaping their own environment. The approach focuses on making rural areas thriving, sustainable places to live and work. Custer possesses a great wealth of cultural resources which our event focused on.
The Design in the Hills 2017 theme was Adaptations. The committee set out to find exciting projects and planning efforts in the Rapid City community that were examples of architectural adaptations. The first day started with a morning outing on the infamous ‘Da Bus’ and ended with a walking tour through the East of 5th street corridor of downtown Rapid City. The first stop on ‘Da Bus’ was at the Bridger Steel plant in Blackhawk. The tour was enlightening to the attendees as they learned about the process of manufacturing metal panels.
The Design in the Hills 2016 theme was Reclamation. Artist Dale Lamphere helped us kick off the 2016 event with a site visit to the remote site east of Rapid City where he was designing, constructing and assembling the now-famous Dignity sculpture. The sculpture of a Native American woman holding a star quilt is 50 feet high, 16 feet deep and 32 feet wide and has more than 100 blue diamond shapes in the quilt that were originally designed to move in the wind. The sculpture now stands on a hill overlooking the Missouri River off of Interstate 90 near Chamberlain, SD.