Meet the DC Team: Axel

Name:  Axel Bishop

Number of years at DC:  28

Title:  I am one of four Principals, I am a Land Planner and Landscape Architect.  I design neighborhoods, parks, drainage systems and school.

Where are you from? I was born in KC, Missouri where my parents grew up. My family moved, and I lived in Albuquerque, NM from infant to 10yrs. We then moved to Dallas, TX where I lived until College.

Where did you go to school? I graduated from Texas Tech University

Do you have any pets? What are they like? I have a Basenji Dog. These are a very interesting breed of African dog. They are basically untrainable but highly personable.  I also have a Springer Spaniel, Freddy.  He is very high energy and a well trained hunting dog.

What's one thing you can't live without? I would say that the one thing I can’t live without is my family.

Where is the farthest you have traveled?  I guess that a trip to Europe would be the farthest.  Budapest, Hungary was probably the farthest destination there.

What's your favorite food? I eat a lot of Soup. I love Dark Chocolate

What's your favorite part of working at Design Concepts? The kind of work that we do seems helpful to the world. It is innovative, recreational and creates good places to play and learn. The collaborative atmosphere makes it a nice place to work.

What would you do with $1 million? I would spend the rest of my life trying to make a positive difference in the world. Actually I think I will try that without the $1M.           

If you could be a professional athlete, what sport would you play? I would race bicycles.  That has remained my favorite sport.

What is your favorite movie?  I really like the philosophy expressed in “Forest Gump”.  One of the few movies I’ve seen more than once.

What inspires you? People who know who they are, and know how to apply that to creating beauty or positive change.

What's one totally random fact about yourself?  I once played guitar for a Southern Baptist evangelical group that toured the country in the summers singing at revivals.

Public Health and The Landscape

Thanks to a Facebook post by Bruce Ward from Choose Outdoors I found an interesting article called "Take a hike and call me in the morning..." in the Washington Post that talks about doctors prescribing outdoor activity as treatment for a variety of ailments. This is not just fluffy news-filler, folks. It is part of a very real trend that recognizes the benefits that parks, greenways, and open space provide in terms of community health and disease prevention. As landscape architects, we have a role to play in the public health movement. Frederick Law Olmsted and others recognized this more than a century ago and devoted themselves to creating places that support the physical, mental, and social well-being of people and communities.

I spent several days last week at Indiana University's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation meeting with their research faculty and discussing how the GRASP® methodology developed by Design Concepts and GreenPlay LLC can be used to support research aimed at making communities healthier places to live. This is exciting stuff for us, and the interesting thing is that they found us and invited us to the table, meaning that the health and wellness field is aware of what landscape architects can offer and welcomes our contribution to their efforts. I'll let you know in future posts where all of this leads. Meanwhile, ask your doctor about that new park in your neighborhood....

Rob Layton

Return of the Buffalo Commons

Thanks to the NRPA Weekly newsletter that shows up in my inbox, I ran across an interesting article about an old idea that I had long forgotten. Many years ago I went to a lecture at CU presented by the proponents of a concept they called the Buffalo Commons. While intrigueing at the time, it nontheless seemed pretty far-fetched. The idea was to remove people from much of the Great Plains and return it to a natural condition where the buffalo could freely roam. Interesting now to hear the idea being resurected by none other than the governor of Kansas. An article at http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/1570333.html talks about the possibility of turning a large part of northwestern Kansas into a "Buffalo Commons National Park".

The article also mentions a bill introduced in Congress last week to restore full funding to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In my travels to inventory and evaluate parks across the country, I frequently run across parks that were created years ago with Land and Water Conservation Funds. These parks are providing an important service today to people in a wide variety of communities. Restoration of this program to full funding would benefit many communities, particularly smaller ones that don't have a lot of other resources for creating parks.

Rob Layton

Whimsy and Adaptability in Spokane Valley's New Park

Discovery Playground, a new park in Spokane Valley, Washington incorporates numerous whimsical and imaginative elements.  Working with Beechwood Metalworks and Playtime Creations, we incorporated sculptures of life-size and oversized animals, fish, and flowers among the play and learning activities.

The park's Secret Garden with Objects of Unusual Size incorporates giant flowers designed and created by Casey Lewis of Beechwood Metalworks, Inc. (pictured at above), a pumpkin large enough to stand in (pictured below), and a chair twice normal size.  The garden is entered by crouching through a small gateway that then reveals the giant objects inside.

The playground has been designed to accommodate children and adults of all abilities, and provide engaging and entertaining play as well as socialization and rehabilitation therapy opportunities.  The bear den (shown above) provides a great resting place for those who may need quiet time.  Additional elements such as interactive musical instrument coves, water play, climbing wall, colorful surfacing, sensory gardens and more are incorporated into the region’s first destination playground.

This project presented new challenges for all of those involved (the geology of Eastern Washington was new for us, and none of the local contractors had worked on a project as fanciful as this).  With the enthusiasm of the community, contractors and the City, everyone is sharing in the vision of the project.  We look forward to its completion in late November!

--Carol Henry

National Recreation and Park Association Annual Congress

Dispatch from Salt Lake City…

Once again it is time for the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA) congress – this year in Salt Lake City. What a great time to be in Utah! It is beautiful here – if a bit windy. This year the Congress is looking a little smaller than usual, presumably due to budgets being slashed across the country. Still there is a great energy here. It is a great time to reconnect with old friends and past clients and see what is new in the world of parks and recreation (see photo).

This year’s keynote speaker, Jim Carroll, encouraged us to pay attention to the future – even embrace it with all of its changes. He emphasized that things are only going to happen faster and we need to be able to respond to keep up and move ahead. It is a good reminder during a time where we are working hard just to put out the fires around us. It is hard to look ahead, but we must do it. He challenged us to think about how parks and recreation can be more responsive, flexible, and on the cutting edge. I guess the response “because we’ve always done it that way” no longer applies.

What does this mean in terms of park design? Providing facilities that keep up with recreation trends? Wiring parks for internet access? Providing spaces for on-line social networking? Installing electronic play equipment? Creating “find a park” and “find a playground” apps for GPS enabled phones? Creating on-line virtual arboretums and amenities inventories for parks?  -OR- How about going the opposite direction, creating spaces where electronics are disabled to encourage face-to-face interaction?

When  I turn this question on my current work as a parks professional, I wonder – “What are we doing in our current work to address the future of parks and recreation?” In a presentation given by Karon Badalamenti of GreenPlay and I, we talked about the future of parks and recreation planning. In our latest projects we have been trying to figure out how to measure Level of Service that includes all things provided by parks and recreation agencies – not just counting things and drawing a circle around them. Ultimately we would like to be able to measure level of service based on quality of experience. That would include all parts of the experience from first thought to memories after. That level of information may really change the way that we look at what we are providing to the public. But we must act fast! The future is quickly approaching!

–Rachel Brenna