Meet the DC Team: Mark

Name: Mark Ballock
Number of years at DC: 3 years

Title: Landscape Architect in training

Where are you from?: I was born in Patuxent River, MD and raised in Mechanicsburg, PA.

Where did you go to school?: I started my college career bouncing around a few different schools in PA, then got my LA degree from Colorado State University.

What's one thing you can't live without?: My Mac.

Where is the farthest you have traveled?: Switzerland or maybe Denmark.

What's your favorite food?: Sushi, though chocolate comes in a close second.

What's your favorite part of working at Design Concepts?: I enjoy being exposed to many different facets of design and construction.

What would you do with $1 million?: I would spend some (read as: ‘lots'), save some, and give some away.

If you could be a professional athlete, what sport would you play?: Hockey.

If you could win any type of award, what award would it be?: A Nobel Prize would be pretty sweet.

What is your favorite movie?: Have seen too many great films to have a single favorite though "Pan’s Labyrinth" was the last movie I saw that really impressed me.

What inspires you?: Music and visual media.

What's one totally random fact about yourself?: I have red hair but nary a drop of Irish blood in me…

Smart Irrigation

Irrigation is one of the many facets of a project's design rendered in-house at Design Concepts. While many firms contract out the irrigation systems required for landscape design we feel it is as crucial a component as any and prefer to include it in the overall scope of a project .

In our efforts to promote water and energy conservation in irrigation design we have recently

been encouraging clients to utilize the advanced irrigation technology now available. Irrigation plans that employ central control systems use smart controllers to communicate either with area or on-site weather stations to determine watering timing and need (pictured left: the on-site station at Denver Botanic Gardens). Smart controllers adjusts for heat, rain, freezing conditions, and more. This helps to ensure that watering is

happening only when needed and thus conserves one of the most valuable resources in Colorado (pictured below: smart system rotary nozzles). Central control systems also promote healthier landscape because water needs are so precisely met. These systems are accessible remotely, allowing projects with few maintenance staff to run effective and conservative irrigation without needing to employ or educate a large number of people—saving money, water, and man-hours.

As these green smart systems are used in public spaces an opportunity for public education is created. DC is exploring including interpretive signage explaining weather station and other system components at sites were these types of irrigation systems are in place as well as interactive websites linked to the smart systems in place in the area.

Smart irrigation means water conservation, a cause DC is eager to promote in both project design and public education throughout the design process.

We also talked a little more about this stuff in a previous post.

Interpretive Signage at Centennial Park

Rifle’s Centennial Park, one of the projects Design Concepts is currently working on, presents new opportunities for creativity. One of the unique aspects is the wayside locations that are positioned throughout this riverside park. The community of Rifle’s (with specific input from the Historical Society and the Downtown Districts) wanted a passive park that people could move through and enjoy. Because it is along a river the park moves in a linear way that gave birth to the idea of the park’s features moving through time. Working under the park’s title—which had been chosen when the community initially decided a park would be built in conjunction with the celebration of its centennial—DC came up with the idea of incorporating both the town’s 100 year history as well as that century’s global history into several aspects of the park.

Each wayside is unique so that interest is maintained throughout the park and repetition is minimized. The park is comprised of 10 waysides, one for every decade the city has experienced. In each, different styles of interpretive signage convey information about the decade represented (see photo). The first decade, 1905-1915, conveys the town’s rich history with oil. The area is shaped like an oil Derek to represent the town’s oil industry with signage showing the cityscape in silhouette. The signs are artfully done and are meant to inspire multi-generational interest along with seating and other aspects unique to each wayside.

Read more about Centennial Park’s unique features on our website.

Utah Park

Kurt from our office was just up in Crested Butte accepting an Honor Award at the CASFM conference. It was indeed an honor for us to win this award, and we look forward to working with this group of people more in the future.
We thought this would be a good opportunity to share a video for the park we've been working on with Cameron at Colorado Photo. The final product is ready and we love it. You can catch the video here.

The park also appears in the book Colorado Urbanizing, "The premier guide to Urbanism in Colorado."

This was an exceptional project for us to work on, and we're so excited about the attention it's getting.

Accelerated Development: Erie Community Park

For the first time in Design Concepts history a major city park is being completed, from Master Plan to finished project, in less than a year. Usually city park projects like Erie’s take years to complete as public meetings are had, master plans are drawn up and repeatedly revised, city councils debate, contractors are chosen, etc. In the case of Erie Community Park, however, everyone’s ability to work quickly and effectively has lead to a projected completion date in November 2009, just eleven months after work on the master plan began!

There are several factors that contributed to the Erie-DC partnership’s ability to get the park through all the initial steps and under construction so fast. The biggest was the willingness of Erie’s Parks and Recreation department to attend weekly design meetings to answer questions on the spot and allow the plans to move forward. Usually this process takes months as the design team and the client send plans and comments back and forth.

Once ground was broken in Erie things continued to work at an accelerated pace. With the abundance of available workers in the industry construction was underway quickly and the contractor (Turner Construction) and sub-contractors continue to get things done in record time.

Little has slowed construction since it began. The weather has not interfered for the most part and even the encounter of one of the old mineshafts, where a shelter support post was meant to go, did not cause much delay. The problem was quickly solved by changing the post’s location.

The pace of the project has been a pleasant surprise and everyone is looking forward to seeing the completed project in November!

photo courtesy of Ken Obrien