Trinity Lutheran Eco Prayer Park

FourFront Design has been thrilled to be a part of the Trinity Eco Prayer Park design process. The park has had very positive reviews by the public and is welcomed as a positive addition to the downtown community. 

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A few of the sustainable features of the design include the use of recycled materials for the circular pathway, passive rainwater harvesting for stormwater management, and the use of xeriscape plant species native to South Dakota.

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For more information, see the great write up in the Rapid City Journal or a clip from the local news. 

We're hoping to break ground this Spring!

Crafting the Future Japan Conference

FourFront Design's Jeremy Altman was recently selected as an AIA Knowledge Scholar to the Crafting the Future Japan Conference. It was held in Tokyo in mid-November, and Jeremy was able to attend to provide multi-media reporting. 

(c) Jeremy Altman, 2011

Check out his fantastic photos here:

Kamakura – Day 1

Tokyo – Day 2

Yokohama – Day 3

Nagoya – Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Kanazawa – Day 7

(c) Jeremy Altman, 2011.

And his blog entries here:

Kamakura Calling

A Tradition of Boundaries

From Metabolism to Mori

Top Japanese Design-Build Firm Hosts American Architects

Here's an excerpt from the "From Metabolism to Mori" entry:

Model of Tokyo. (c) Jeremy Altman, 2011.

And his videos can be found here (the videos of the Tokyo Model are highly recommended):

Taisei Corporation Technology Center

Shirakawa-Go Gassho Style Thatched Roof

Umimirai Library Kanazawa

Osanbashi Pier in Yokohama

Kengo Kuma GC Protho Entry

Kengo Kuma’s comments at Medal of Honor Ceremony

Mori Tokyo Model Video

Thanks for sharing your amazing experience with us Jeremy!

Lessen Impact Challenge at FourFront Design!

EcoFront has started a Lessen Impact Challenge for all employees of FourFront Design. The purpose is to become more aware of how we as individuals can become more sustainable in our work and home lives.

The idea came from No Impact Man, who attempted to live a zero-waste lifestyle with his family for an entire year.

EcoFront has developed a six week program, attempting to bring awareness to what our impact is on the earth. Each week focuses on a different challenge: consumption, transportation, trash, energy, water, and food.

This week marks the beginning of our challenge, focusing on consumption. The idea is not to completely stop consuming; rather to generally become aware of what we buy, why we buy it, where it comes from, and if we can make this habit more sustainable.

A few examples of the week's challenges include:

• Not buying anything for 3 days this week.
• If you do buy something, buy locally.
• Donate, recycle, or sell 5 things.

We had a lunch discussion on Monday to kick off the week, where we showed The Story of Stuff and and the first clip of No Impact Man.

Personally, I've found it astonishing how hard it is to reduce my use of disposable products (plastic baggies, paper towels, etc.).

FourFront employees, what's been the biggest challenge for you? Leave a comment below!



Photo credit

Local Food Challenge at FourFront!

EcoFront is hosting our own local food challenge for FourFront Design employees on September 15th. 

Mixed green salad with goat cheese and roasted beets from Dakota Thyme

Everyone is encouraged to bring a potluck dish that uses local ingredients from within 200 miles of Rapid City or the state of South Dakota. The competition will include winners for the best meat dish, vegetarian dish, side dish, salad, dessert, and garden-grown dish.


Here's a resource list of places to get local food:

• Black Hills Farmer's Market
• Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Founder's Park
• Main Street Market
• Breadroot Co-Op
• Staple & Spice Market
• Prairie Edge (local bison)
• Dee Holberg
• Set up along Omaha across from Roosevelt Park, Tuesday and Thursday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• Sausage, beef, cheese, chickens, honey, eggs, jellies/jam, and produce
• Black Hills Milk (also sells at the Farmer's Market)
• Sunrise Ranch Meats
• 34 Ranch Meats
• Wild Idea Buffalo Company
• The Potted Rabbit
• Cutting Edge Meat Market (Two locations: Piedmont and 5312 Sheridan Lake Rd.) 

Buffalo Chuck Roast with Hard Cider Sauce and Harvest Hash from Wild Idea Buffalo Company.

And here are a few links for recipes:

• Dakota Local Food Network's list of recipes
• Dakota Thyme
• Find out what's in season on Epicurious. Click on your state and the month and it will even give you links for recipes for seasonal ingredients.
• Little House Living
• Wild Idea Buffalo Company's recipes

Black Hills residents, do you have any local recipes to share?

Let it Rain!

Recently, we've designed a few sites utilizing rainwater gardens.

These are slight depressions in the site's topography that are planted with vegetation. Rain and stormwater runoff naturally drain into the basins, creating an attractive low-maintenance landscape feature. 

Example of a rainwater garden

Here's a visual that might explain the idea better:

You can use a mix of wildflowers, grasses, shrubs, and trees in rainwater gardens. When planting, place seedlings 1' apart, with more flood tolerant species toward the bottom of the basin and drought tolerant species toward the top. Include at least 40% grasses to provide dense root masses to help with erosion. 

Some excellent species to use in rainwater gardens in the Black Hills region include:

Prairie smoke
Geum triflorum

Purple prairieclover
Dalea purpurea

Prairie dropseed
Sporobolus heterolepsis

When locating where you want to put your rainwater garden, make sure that you're placing it where the site's existing runoff flows to. Also, be sure to locate it at least 15' away from structures. 

Rainwater gardens are an effective way to utilize natural runoff, avoiding the need for expensive irrigation systems. These features are actually part of a larger family of sustainable methods called rainwater harvesting.

To learn more about this technique, I suggest Brad Lancaster's book Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond as an excellent resource. 

Cheers to free water!

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Sharing the Road

Construction on FourFront's design for 6th Street is nearing completion!

This is the first street in downtown Rapid City to see this:

Courtesy of Rapid City Journal.

The symbol is called a "sharrow" and it means that the lane is intended to be shared between vehicles and bicycles. Cyclists are legally entitled to ride in the lane along with vehicles, creating more visibility for themselves.

This is a progressive move for Rapid City, and one that may take a bit of time and education for people to get used to.

What do you think? Do you like the idea of a sharrow?

Bike to Work (in the rain) Week 2011

Last week was Bike To Work Week and unfortunately, the weather looked a lot like this:

A few FourFronters braved the wind and rain and rode to work anyway. Kudos to Aaron, Garry, Wade, and Jeremy (and whoever else I might have missed). I hear that Garry logged over 40 miles in 4 days!

Aaron leaving the office for the day.

Didn't have a chance to bike last week? The entire month of May is National Bike Month so get out there and ride!

Western Dakota Tech Groundbreaking

Come one, come all to the groundbreaking ceremony at Western Dakota Tech today at 1:00!

This expansion project includes a new library, student services center, and academic spaces and labs. FourFront Design completed the design recently as the first step in the overall campus master plan.

The master plan serves to guide development in a sustainable manner and includes space for trails, recreation,  permaculture, and wind turbines in addition to academic spaces.

We'll see you at 1:00!

Activating the Alley

Check out what's happening in the alley connecting to Main Street Square and behind the new development on 5th and Main.

Here's what it looks like now:

And here's a peek at what it could look like soon:

Rapid City's downtown is quickly transforming, with new public spaces, retail, restaurants, and entertainment. The alleyway will soon be a vital connection between 5th and 6th streets, creating even more space for events and vendors.

Such an exciting time in downtown!

Construction Administration: The Future is Paperless

Imagine creating an RFP for that unforeseen situation at the job site and uploading it with a few clicks of the mouse to an online information sharing system that immediately notifies the Owner, the General Contractor and any Design Team members. Imagine printing off one copy of a shop drawing for review, or better yet, reviewing shop drawings online and returning them with edits to the General Contractor via the same online information sharing system. It sounds exactly what design firms like FourFront have been wanting to utilize for years...and we now have access to the technology. Recently, FourFront Design has been exercising some of these ideas with Submittal Exchange in the Construction Administration portion of four projects: Joint Force Headquarters Readiness Center, JFRC Addition, Toyota New Dealership Facility of the Black Hills, and Westhills Village Commons Remodel and Addition. Here are just a few brief highlights of how Submittal Exchange is helping quell the tide of paper in our office and helping to create better communication throughout the project:

• Submittal Exchange is a great back up to our current tracking logs and files.
• Instead of 5-8 copies of each shop drawing being trucked across town/mailed/physically walked to/from our office, a PDF of the shop drawing is uploaded to Submittal Exchange for review and distribution to all relevant parties.
• Any time any item (RFI, RFP, Supplemental Instruction, Observation Report or Shop Drawing Submittal) gets uploaded onto the site or updated on Submittal Exchange, email notifications are then immediately sent to all consultants and architects/engineers that need to review that particular item. Submittal Exchange indicates who should review the item in what order so there is no doubling of work or missed reviews.
• It is up to each individual user whether they want a paper copy of items or not. (Example: Currently, FourFront receives one paper copy of each shop drawing submittal for records while the project is ongoing. However,if more PDF editing software gets installed on users computers in the future the need for that copy may go away as well.)
• At the end of the project, Submittal Exchange will send you a CD with all of the information accrued online during the project for your records.
• Submittal Exchange is very interested in helping with LEED/sustainable efforts on projects. Recently, they held a free webinar concerning LEED, BIM and how Submittal Exchange can help the process.

These are just a few of the reasons that Submittal Exchange is making a difference in these four projects at FourFront. For more information feel free to stop by my desk or visit this link.

We're Famous!

FourFront Design was recently featured in Green Business Quarterly!

Go here to see the publication (we're on page 59).

SDHDA is LEED® Certified!

FourFront Design, Inc. is SO excited to announce that one of their design projects, the South Dakota Housing Development Authority's (SDHDA), New Office Building, in Pierre, SD, has been awarded LEED® Certification! It has been established by the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). LEED is the nation's preeminent program for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings. SDHDA’s New Office Building achieved LEED certification for energy use, lighting, water and material use as well as incorporating a variety of other sustainable strategies. By using less energy and water, LEED certified building save money for families, businesses and taxpayers; reduce greenhouse gas emissions’ and contribute to a healthier environment for residents, workers and the larger community.

“The SDHDA, New Office Building’s LEED certification demonstrates tremendous green building leadership,” said Rick Fedrizzi, President, CEO & Founding Chair, U.S. Green Building Council. “The urgency of USGBC’s mission has challenged the industry to move faster and reach further than ever before, and the SDHDA, New Office Building, serves as a prime example with just how much we can accomplish.” LED certification of SDHDA New Office Building was based on a number of green design and construction features that positively impact the project itself and the broader community. These features and impacts include:

• 12% of building materials composed of recycled content
• 44% of building materials extracted, processed and manufactured within 500 miles of the jobsite - saving the transportation energy and supporting regional economies
• Site Design to capture and retain the stormwater runoff from developed areas using a bio-retention pond to remove pollutants
• Light colored concrete parking lot to reduce the heat gain of the site and therefore its effect on the surrounding ecology
• Site lighting designed to reduce light pollution
• Preferred parking provided for staff who drive energy efficient vehicles
• Exercise Room and Showers to promote employee wellness
• Construction using low VOC materials and techniques to achieve good indoor air quality

Compared to a typical (baseline) facility the SDHDA facility uses:

• 86% less water for landscape irrigation by selection of native and adapted plant species
• 40% less water for occupant use by installing high-efficiency plumbing fixtures and occupant sensors
• 26% less energy (based on whole building energy simulation)