Landscape Design Workshop
Design Workshop’s commitment to providing leadership in design and planning is broadening to help communities in need through the establishment of the Design Workshop Foundation (DWF), a 501 (C)3, non-profit organization. By supporting our staff in their volunteer efforts as well as collaborating with our clients and other like-minded professionals on pro-bono design projects, the DWF aims to deliver innovative designs to support and elevate our contribution to the public realm.
The DWF Board of Directors is a representation of the employees of Design Workshop. We have crafted our Mission, Vision and Approach, to help guide the work of our organization:
As Design Workshop employees, we are committed to designing legacy environments for future generations. To foster this pursuit, the DWF provides design leadership to individuals and to groups that are in need. It is our collective desire to strike a balance in our pursuit of socially equitable, environmentally innovative, artistically inspired and economically sensible design solutions, while balancing our lives through public service for the improvement of our communities and of our environments.
The DWF uses and promotes the Legacy Design process: to educate and to mentor future members of our profession; to execute highly responsive design solutions; and to facilitate the transfer of critical knowledge to the public through outreach. By providing Design Workshop employees with a vehicle to design and to implement innovative solutions to problems affecting our communities and our environment, we achieve ‘legacy’.
Through collaboration with allied charitable organizations the foundation will: mentor young students in design education; find, fund and execute innovative design solutions that solve pressing needs in the communities where we live and work; and provide public outreach by delivering critical knowledge and promoting discourse through community workshops, public speaking, teaching and participatory charrettes. The Foundation will act as a conduit for internal collaboration and for external interaction with allied organizations. Through participation in the Foundation, volunteers will be exposed to mentoring, pro-bono projects, as well as networking opportunities with individuals from other firms and disciplines.
Design Symposia are a testament to Design Workshop’s concept that we are one firm with long hallways. Symposia are design reviews and learning sessions that convene multiple offices for critical discussion around several projects that share a theme, scale, issues or program – retail environments, streetscape design, new community design, park design, stormwater strategies, and conservation easements, for example.
Using web and video conference technology, teams from different Design Workshop offices convene to review the projects as well as to engage in broader and more elevated discussions about topics and issues that the projects share. Symposia are a valuable forum for tapping into and sharing expertise and experience across offices, building capacity and knowledge and receiving objective input from outside your team. They are a forum for discovery and for building collective intelligence about project best practices. Frequently, guest experts are invited to participate.
Source: www.designworkshop.com
