Design Concepts
Pickleball Court Design: Maximizing Fun and ...

Pickleball is one of the hottest trends in recreation right now, and for good reason. It’s a welcoming sport that offers an abundance of fun. It’s known as a ‘game for everyone.’ Pickleball encourages physical activity to improve people’s fitness and wellness. As park designers, we see pickleball on the agenda for most of the park projects we work on.

Pickleball Court Design: Maximizing Fun and Functionality
Erik Spring
Erie Community Park: Third and Final Phase

This summer we celebrated the grand opening of the third and final phase of Erie Community Park. 12 acres of features were added to this park extending its value to the community. The park is consistently filled with people enjoying all it has to offer, and we could be more excited to see that enthusiasm.

Erie Community Park: Third and Final Phase
Design Concepts
Outdoor Classrooms: Now More Than Ever

This past year, schools all over the country were forced to allow fewer students inside and keep classes physically separate from each other, making their outside spaces a hot commodity. In many cases schools had to scramble to figure out ways to make this happen with little time to plan. We propose that to better equip schools for the future, more time, funding, and attention is needed to design these outdoor learning environments in ways students, teachers and the neighboring community can enjoy throughout the year.

Outdoor Classrooms: Now More Than Ever
Design Concepts
Two Hunters Park: A Tribute to Mark Martinez ...

Parks all around the world are known for igniting emotions of hope, peace, and optimism. Two Hunters Park, a commemorative park honoring the lives of Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin of Firestone, CO is no exception.

Two Hunters Park: A Tribute to Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin
Schools
Design Concepts
Helping Our Community Grow

We worked alongside these supporters for several years with continuing development on Lafayette Elementary’s garden as well as their three playgrounds. Recently, we began replacing raised flower beds in areas being reestablished.

Helping Our Community Grow

Not A Dull Moment In 2016

Coming Up For Air

As we catch our breath halfway through the year we also reflect on all the amazing things happening right now in our office. The sheer number of projects we're working on is humbling and has kept us going round the clock. There is also a great mix of project types and scales, and relationships we have built that we're proud of. The cycle from design through construction can take years to complete – take Phase 1 of Arapahoe County Fairgrounds Park for example. Missed the grand opening a few weeks ago? Don't worry, this video has you covered.

Breaking Ground

We have also had a large number of ground breaking events and similar types of celebrations to be proud of. 

  • Creekside Elementary
  • Erie PK-8 school
  • Inspiration Playground in Bellevue, WA
  • Brighton 27J High School
  • Boulder Valley Schools: Angevine MS, Broomfield Heights MS, Centennial MS, Louisville MS, Manhattan MS, Platt MS - all getting new track and fields with synthetic turf, top notch!

 

Keeping Us Busy

Other projects we are currently working on:

Golden CO Parks & Rec MP Update – first GRASP® Active project utilizing a health indicators assessment

Expanding our Wyoming school experience: Carey JHS - Cheyenne, WY and Laura Irwin Elem & Riverside MS/HS - Basin, WY

Douglas County: West Fields at Highland Heritage Regional Park is nearly complete and Bingham Lake Fishing Dock is currently in design

We’ve been busy with Site Improvements at Boulder Valley School Schools:

  • Douglass Elem.
  • Centaurus HS
  • Broomfield HS
  • Broomfield Heights MS
  • Birch Elem.
  • Pioneer Elem.

Lakewood’s Carmody Park Playground is breaking ground next week

Bison Overlook at Genesee Mountain Park for Denver Mountain Parks

Prospect Park – Redeveloping a community park for Wheat Ridge

Colorado Parks and Wildlife – Redevelopment plans at State Parks: Boyd Lake, Eleven-Mile, Stagecoach and Highline

Logan Town Park - Logan, NM. This is an intriguing site!

much more...

...whew!

 

Celebrating 35 Amazing Years!

 

 

Axel and Rob had spent much of their lives in the arid southwest. Axel grew up in the New Mexico high desert and intuitively understood both the natural and cultural landscape shaped by that land. Rob had traveled the world and ended up in west Texas where the two met as landscape architecture students. Their values were shaped by the social shifts in the 1960s and 1970s. Their visions were part of a new American humanist and environmental ethos. Joined by Carol, a Wyoming native, the three molded the firm into the exemplary social and environmental studio that exists today.

Design Concepts created parks and schoolyards that replaced much of the standard irrigated sod with native grasses and flowers. Drainage problems that had previously been piped and channeled were redesigned for water to run free. They formed wetlands that became a self-sustaining environment. The school children learned and played differently. This was 1982.

The new type of park that they pioneered began to look like the nature that had existed prior to heavy handed uses. Athletic fields became irrigated oases within the re-naturalized parkscape. Nature and play became intertwined, and the need for water was much less. The drainages now ran clearer. Through this blend of native plantings, paths led to gathering spaces. No longer simply catalogue shelters stuck in mowed flatlands, inviting spaces were built where children’s play, adult athletics and natural woodlands met. Inviting architecture stood as the center of so many uses. Their parks exemplified classic social hubs that draw people together. In the early eighties this re-use of historical form was quite revolutionary.

Rob, Axel, and Carol stood behind their principles of environment, people, society and built places. Thirty-five years later, Design Concepts still maintains this focus which interestingly is now more mainstream. We continue to explore and look forward to the next generation of innovation.

 

DC Legacy Project: Crest View Elementary

The Habitat Outdoor Classroom at Crest View Elementary, Boulder. Completed in 1990, The Habitat continues to serve as an integral learning space for the students and teachers. Serving a dual purpose as a detention facility, its resiliency withstood the 2013 Boulder County floods by collecting as much runoff as it could, thereby minimizing the impact on the school building. That’s a true testament of success in our book! 

DC Legacy Project: Boulder HS Creek Corridor

The Boulder High School Creek Corridor project also supports the dual importance between functional design and long term aesthetics.  Also completed in the early 1990s, the City of Boulder and Boulder Valley School District teamed up on this flood mitigation project to address pedestrian circulation and flooding concerns along the shared Boulder Creek Corridor, just behind Boulder High School. Both the athletic fields and the popular Boulder Creek Path needed significant upgrades to address pedestrian circulation and flooding concerns. Design Concepts worked with both entities to re-align sections of the path, remove structures along the creek to allow for the needed fields and elevating a pedestrian bridge over the creek. The bridge connects the school grounds to the football stadium. The entire project resulted in less congestion along the path, maximized views from the school grounds and provided a drainage corridor to guide floodwaters away from the high school. The floodwaters of 2013 put this area to the test, and while the fields flooded as well as some of the high school, this project served its purpose to mitigate as much of the flood waters as it was designed for! 

DC Legacy Project: Noble Park

Design Concepts set the bar in 1982 when we formed the first mixed-use, park-centered, pedestrian-oriented community in Colorado called Noble Park in Boulder. Since then, our communities employ every form of housing density, housing type, alleys, roundabouts, regional trail crossings, center parks, and commercial space, in addition to incorporating everything from market rate, high-end housing, to highly dense European style affordable housing (Thistle Community Housing).  Health and active lifestyles are always at the forefront of our planning efforts. Design Concepts designs communities within parks, not vice-versa.  Recreation, shopping, education, working and growing are seamless and integral every time.  

Design Concepts is an M/WBE, SBE Landscape Architecture design firm with the City and County of Denver and a DBE under the US Department of Transportation’s Colorado Unified Certification Program (UCP).