JVA, Inc. Engineers

The Colorado Engineering company JVA, Inc. is a local structural and civil engineering company that Design Concepts often works with.  When leading a project we frequently hire JVA as our civil engineering consultants, and we have also been paired with them by lead architects which both companies serve as sub-consultants to.  While we work mostly with the Civil Engineers in the JVA Boulder office, their firm also has offices in Winter Park and Fort Collins.

Over the years of working on Colorado parks and schools together the two firms have come to have both a friendly professional and social relationship.  Among other contributors to our successful working relationship is the fact that both firms share mutual drafting standards, making file-sharing easier on everyone.

Recently JVA and Design Concepts have both been involved in a variety of projects including Bayou Gulch in Douglas County. Currently we are working on Aurora Public Schools' Preschool-8 project as well as the 38th and Kipling park in Wheatridge, both which are under construction.

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