Design Concepts
Redesigning Possibilities: How Butterfield ...

Possibilities Playground at Butterfield Crossing Park is a bold rethinking of what inclusive play can be. Designed as a sensory-rich, fully accessible space shaped by community input, it invites children and caregivers of all abilities to connect, explore, and belong, together.

Redesigning Possibilities: How Butterfield Crossing Park Became a New Benchmark for Inclusive Play
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

April is World Landscape Architecture Month!

This April we are exploring the wonderful world of landscape architecture. April is World Landscape Architecture Month and Design Concepts has jumped on board! It’s a quick and easy way to get engaged, looking into the landscape as seen through our individual lenses. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) initiated this campaign to rally wide-reaching audiences to share their perspective into public and private spaces.  Along with thousands of others, we are posting pictures of designed spaces along with the cue card, “This is Landscape Architecture.”  Visit ASLA’s website and find out more and see a wonderful collection of diverse landscape photos across the country: ASLA World Landscape Architecture Month.

Landscape Architecture Surrounds us Daily—for Everyone, Everywhere

Carter Studies for the LARE!

Carter Studies for the LARE!

Think of how many ways landscape architecture affects our daily lives: parks, trails, playgrounds, campuses, drainage and detention, plazas, downtown urban spaces . . . the list goes on. The goal of ASLA and the World Landscape Architecture Month efforts is to create a national story about connecting people across the world, collaborating and sharing ideas that promote the landscape architecture profession, and help to educate public audiences about the importance of our profession.  

Design Concepts is honored and fortunate to be a part of a profession that affords us opportunities to share our passion with the world. Every day we strive to create broader understanding of the role we play to shape and preserve the environment.

Presentation at Arborist Conference Supports Environment's Role in Health and Well Being

The local park - publicly-funded and open to everyone - is an American democratic idea that began nearly 200 years ago and has spread around the world. Today, that idea is as powerful as ever. Parks are once again being looked at as antidotes to urban ills as more people now live in urban areas than rural ones. A growing base of scientific evidence offers support for the role of parks in promoting health and well-being. This is the message that Rob Layton, FASLA, one of the founding Principals of Design Concepts presented to the Southern Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculturists at their 74th Annual Conference and Trade Show in Knoxville recently.

As stewards of the urban forest, arboriculturists at the conference were interested in hearing how trees and other vegetation within parks and public spaces contribute to physical, emotional, social, ecological, and economic well-being. Rob’s presentation included specific measures and practices that can be used to assure that healthful green space is available to everyone in the built environment.

Frances Jacobs Incorporates Energy Theme Into School Playground

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean.  This quote is one of many energy-themed educational elements found at Frances Jacobs School in Denver, where color, textures and patterns vividly intertwine the theme throughout the site. The October 2015 issue of Landscape Record magazine focuses on projects around the world and how vibrant design is at the forefront. Design Concepts is proud to have Frances Jacobs School in Denver included as one of the highlighted projects, found on page 108.

Schoolyards offer playful opportunities to incorporate vivid colors with a variety of whimsical textures and patterns into fun and educational elements. Energy-themed elements at Frances Jacobs incorporate an abundance of color as that was the strong desire of the principal, staff and other stakeholders who participated early on in the design phase. Talk about creativity! The energy theme produced an abundance of ideas for how to incorporate this theme into the site. For example, the eye-catching main entrance to the school is a “Wind Walk” of richly colored patterned concrete. The gateway signage portrays an abstract curving wind motion, and the outdoor amphitheater has etched energy-related quotes into the steps and sandblasted imagery such as corn, geothermal, petroleum, sun, coal and hydro power. Visit the playground and you’ll find a weathervane sculpture that represents kinetic energy as well as teaches navigational direction; windmill hopscotch, representing rotational energy converted from the wind created from rotating sails of the windmill, accessible for kids in wheelchairs; tetherball with “giant propellers” (etched colorful blowing triangles in the asphalt depicting “scattered” objects); and foursquare courts with the varieties of wind painted into the quadrants: moderate wind and hurricane wind for example. This project was an enjoyable one not to mention a learning experience for Design Concepts, the staff and students!

Schoolyard Facelift in Logan County Colorado

Caliche Elementary received a $7,000 School Play Yard Initiative grant from Great Outdoors Colorado to help the school upgrade their old and outdated playground. The Caliche K-12 School was built to serve rural communities near Iliff, Colorado, and the site also serves as a community’s park site during off hours. Design Concepts is working with the staff and students to provide a Master Plan that will help the school’s application for a $100,000 construction grant to build the playground. Highlights of the Master Plan includes new playground equipment with accessible surfacing, gardens, new early childhood area fencing with windscreen, safer court play areas, and a group shade shelter with picnic tables to be used for class activities, socializing and afterschool activities. Farther from the school building a nature trail with mileage markers which incorporate information about local plants and animals, enhanced native planting areas, future synthetic turf field due to limited water availability are included in the master plan.

The school is also holding multiple fundraisers, as they will need to match a portion of the grant. The next fundraiser is “A Night at the Races”, to be held March 26 at the Elks Lodge in Sterling, Colorado.

Much of the school’s current equipment has been in place since the school was built in the 1980s, and doesn’t meet current safety standards.  GOCO’s program is a great opportunity for small communities to upgrade their facilities, provide a connection between students and their environment, and create invaluable outdoor learning spaces.

Uncovering the Past and Envisioning the Future

Design Concepts has teamed with Muller Engineering to reshape and revitalize the North Dry Gulch Watershed in Lakewood, CO. Begun in 2010, this drainage project along historic Colfax Avenue will bring to light and redevelop a dry creek that has been buried under the city streets and buildings for decades.

The rich history of West Colfax predates the 1850s, when it was a trade route for the Ute Indians. By the 1900s this thoroughfare served as the main connector between Denver and the agricultural communities of Morrison and Golden. The constant bustle of hay wagons and peddlers evolved into trolley lines and bicycle lanes as Denver and the West developed and grew.

Now the North Dry Gulch outfall project is intended to correct long-standing drainage issues along this urban corridor. This ambitious project opens the door to create a new and vital environment. Improvements to mitigate flood risk, as well as improve multimodal connectivity and access to new public spaces, will allow for exciting opportunities for public use. Future investment on and around the legendary Colfax highway will follow. Rich in history and lore in the Denver region, Colfax is a prominent, highly developed commercial and residential area. This new drainage channel and public use corridor will add both recreation and commercial access while serving as critical flood control infrastructure.

The multi-disciplinary project is led by the City of Lakewood and Urban Drainage and Flood Control District, with highly experienced waterway consulting by Muller Engineering. Design Concepts has been involved as recreation and multimodal transportation planners since the initial stages of the North Dry Gulch project. Lakewood and the Denver metro community envision a modern and inviting future for this important piece of infrastructure, a regional asset for both function and fun. This seasoned team of experts is on task to create just that.

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).