In a recent article entitled, “The Measured Response,”1 Landscape Architecture Magazine (LAM) featured Design Workshop’s comprehensive design approach, DW Legacy Design®. The article, which appeared in the March 2012 issue, opens with a large image of Design Workshop’s Denver studio. Allyson Mendenhall, who leads the DW Legacy Design® Program for the firm, is laughing while working with a team on developing metrics for a project. This image is an open invitation to read this convincing and interesting article, which focuses on Design Workshop’s broad performance-based design approach and its influence on landscape architecture education and research. And the influence is expected to be sweeping and far reaching.

This was the first time I had been to the new downtown Denver Justice Center Campus and the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse. Approaching the building was a good experience, the security screening was efficient, and the jury waiting room located right off the lobby was simple to get to and efficient. So far so good.

Then the call to join a group of 45 potential jurors in a courtroom came – District 5 on the 5th floor.  First, we were asked to be seated in the rock hard wooden benches in the back of the room (where the public usually sits). Perhaps the benches were to reflect some sort of tradition in courtroom design but in 2012, it is really necessary to make people as uncomfortable as possible? (But little did I know that the discomfort was just starting.)

I then found myself as one of 12 jurors, sitting in the jury box, for two days of trial plus one day of deliberation in the jury room. The seats in the jury box were cushioned swivel chairs, bolted in to the floor. Pretty comfy. The fatal flaw in the design was that the wall in front of the jury box was about four inches from the front of the chair. I couldn’t even sit with my legs directly in front of me – sitting instead with them in a v-shape pressed against the wall. And of course, straightening my legs at all during the day was out of the question. I really felt sorry for the few really tall guys in the group. It made the legroom in the back of any airplane seem luxurious. My conclusion: the person who did the drawings never sat in those chairs.

Other complaints came from the jury. The jury room was very small – it was just big enough for the conference table and chairs, and it was windowless. Two walls were painted pea soup green. One woman on the jury really struggled with claustrophobia, and since we spent an entire day in that room deliberating, she was a basketcase by the end of it. Additionally, in order to minimize disruptions, there was a restroom adjacent to the jury room. Without this facility, jurors would have to walk through the courtroom to get the main hallway with restrooms. But one unisex restroom for 12 people made for a difficult day.

The designers of the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse nearly hit a homerun but, they forgot to pay attention to the comfort of a very important part of the legal system: the jurors. 

Designers should always experience the spaces they design.

As I watched the transformation, I thought about other projects where investment in the public realm was the catalyst for adjacent private investment both in the form of new development and redevelopment. In the case of the improvements on 14th Street, had the quality of the public right-of-way diminished so much that it was bringing down the value of adjacent property? City planners, developers and business leaders had talked about overhauling 14th Street for over a decade. What would the benefit have been, if any, if they could have acted quicker? The quality of the pedestrian experience was one of the worst in the downtown core, yet 14th Street was the venue to get people to/from the Denver Convention Center, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Larimer Square, City of Denver's Wellington E. Webb Building and several hotels.

Despite the condition of the 14th Street experience, public entities invested in the Hyatt Regency at the Convention Center and Ellie Caulkins Opera House.  Private sector entities invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build The Spire, Four Seasons, Embassy Suites, and the renovation of Executive Towers (the Curtis Hotel).

Thank goodness the City of Denver, Downtown Denver Partnership, the 14th Street Business Improvement District and the voter approval of the Better Denver Bond funds figured out how to get the improvements constructed. Now residents, businesses and visitors alike can benefit from a safer and better experience in which to travel 14th Street.

You can read more about the 14th Street improvements as well as see images of the transformation by visiting the project's page on the City of Denver's website as well as on the contractor's (Concrete Works) website.

The striking thing about his work is a focus on the everyday and how he manages to elevate rather mundane information into art. He quantifies things like meetings with acquaintances or typical daily activities, and then once a year he publishes a yearly report that can only be described as inspiring. Not only is information presented with stunning beauty and clarity, a deeper story is conveyed about living life and how many of the routine things we do, like eating lunch or running into friends, are genuinely integral parts of our lives.

 When I think about Design Workshop's approach of weaving design with measurement and evidence, I cannot help but be motivated by the graphics of Nicolas Felton. His approach challenges traditional notions of what data and information are by organizing and presenting them in compelling and artful ways. What do you think our profession can learn from this approach?

Note: Michael Tunte is a landscape architect and project manager in our Aspen, CO office.

Measurement is all around us. We encounter it every day—spanning our personal lives, our community involvement and professional endeavors.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to run a little experiment out of curiosity—to collect examples where I came across instances of measurement, where quantified information was shared to as a part of communicating, conveying progress, making a comparison or telling a success story.

IMAGE 1: COMMUNITY GARDEN
My community garden sends a weekly email itemizing food donations collected from the various plots and distributed to organizations that help people in need, such as homeless transition shelters. On the face of it, this is a list of produce, a quantification of food donated. But it is part of a bigger story of the community banding together to do something for the greater good.

If you’re a visualization geek like me you may already be familiar with some or all of these, but for those who aren’t, hopefully these will inspire you to show your data in new ways:

http://infosthetics.com/
http://chartporn.org/
http://visual.ly/
http://flowingdata.com/
 

Here are a few highlights:

This graphic shows the proposed 2012 Federal Budget, with the relative sizes of each circle representing the budget for that category. Click on the "death-taxes" link below for more information on this image.

http://visual.ly/death-taxes

http://visual.ly/natural-resources-how-long-will-they-last
http://www.nytimes.com//interactive/2009/07/31/business/20080801-metrics-graphic.html?hp

Sure it is.

Do we long for the days when the phone rang off the hook with more project offers than we could possibly take on?

Of course.

Do we wish that nothing had changed?

Nope.

In fact, we see that being a smaller, more focused firm has bolstered our ability to be a catalyst for change. Thank goodness the “build anything and everyone will buy it” days of the mid-2000s are behind us. Now developers and cities must build the right thing in order for it to be successful.

As planners and designers, we must assume a leadership role in sustainable development because we are the ones in a position to influence the outcome. We think of the profession as being made up of “first responders” who create lasting built and natural environments. But, what does that mean to us? We have evolved as a learning organization and a thought-driven firm, seeking out complex and challenging projects wherever intellectual interests may lead. Especially now, our goal is to do work that matters, work that makes a difference, work that contributes to the wellbeing of the planet – to do well by doing good.

Impacted by a poor economy – high unemployment, stagnant compensation, decreasing housing values – the market is catching up with the movement toward living more responsibly. People are learning that it’s important to combine the idealistic with the practical and they are searching for ways to live out their ideals within the context of realism. And they are looking to those in the forefront for leadership.

The design profession must forge ahead in this uncertain economic world in which we live and strive to leave legacies for generations to come. What does that mean for you and your firm? How have you forged ahead? What are the specific ways we collectively as a profession can do that?

At Design Workshop, we have re-committed ourselves to four fundamental conditions:
1)  Comprehensiveness of the broadest band of knowledge
2)  Inclusiveness of all necessary disciplines
3)  Transparent decision making and willingness to communicate
4)  Collective measurement of progress

What about you?

Note: Becky Zimmermann is President of Design Workshop.