Our friends at Public Interest Design just released a list of 100 individuals and organizations in the U.S. doing important work at the intersection of design and service. We are honored to be recognized as part of this growing movement that is re-imagining the world!

We are excited to announce the winners of the banner poster contest:

1. ‘This Blows’ by Henry Novak
2. ‘Trainscape’ by Tim Guthrie
3. ‘Corn Rocket (Dream Big)’ by Maria Hansen

Thanks so much to everyone who voted, and congratulations to Patti Benker, the lucky winner of the free poster!

Make sure to head over to our new online store to pick up one of the posters. If your favorite banner did not win, don’t fret. You can still get a limited edition fine art print of any or all of the 25 banner designs!

We are excited to announce our new online store—where you can purchase unique items related to Emerging Terrain’s community projects. Pick up some postcards, a banner bag, a poster, or a fine art print. These are the gifts all the kids (of all ages) are asking for this holiday season. Get them while they last! All proceeds support the work of Emerging Terrain.

If you have ideas for other items, or if you’d like to order a print of a photo you’ve seen on our website, please feel free to contact us!

> Head to the store

Come learn about the changing landscape of Sarpy County and what it means for the community

Wednesday, November 28, 2012
7pm, snacks provided

former Borders Bookstore
Shadow Lake Towne Center
72nd St. & Highway 370
Papillion, NE

Download the event poster and hang it on your wall!

Photo by Alex MacLean

Click on the images below to read more about each individual banner to help you choose your favorite!

We’re sorry voting has expired, but be sure to check our website soon for the winning banner and banner print sales!

Please join us for presentations and a panel discussion on what went in to creating one of Omaha’s most eye-catching installations and two very memorable events. Drinks and snacks will be provided.

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012

7pm

Emerging Terrain Studio

1717 Vinton Street

Download the event poster to hang on your wall!

Please join us for a casual salon-style discussion about the concept of ‘public space’ and what it means in Omaha. We will have drinks and snacks to help encourage conversation.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012
7pm

FREE

Emerging Terrain Studio
1717 Vinton

Download the event poster to hang up on your wall!

At its most basic, the Trug: Leavenworth project—a partnership between the Greater Omaha Chamber and Emerging Terrain—provides some public space and brightens up the steet in an area that is considered by some to be a little rough around the edges.

But since the Trugs are only out on the street for four months, we hope there can be some lasting effects after the Trugs are removed this autumn. We want the project to be a catalyst—a spark—that sets off a cascade of activity. We are now halfway through the summer, and we are seeing some very promising things that are starting to look like that cascade just might be beginning in various ways.

Leavenworth Restriping

This weekend marks the beginning of the City’s restriping of Leavenworth Street between 13th and 31st Streets—which includes the Trug segment!

Although many factors played into the City’s decision to remove a lane of car traffic and add a bike lane, the Trug: Leavenworth project helped to encourage and accelerate the process. We worked closely with the City for the past year as the Trugs were developed, and early on we included schematic proposals for how the street could be transformed through restriping. We held joint community meetings about both initiatives, championing each other’s projects. Like the Trugs, the City sees restriping as a lightweight way to have a big impact on the neighborhood. We think the restriping is a big success for everyone—the City, the Trug project, and of course the neighborhood. We are happy to have played a part in this permanent change to the street.

Photo by Bryce Bridges Photographic

Books!

The Little Free Library has garnered much excitement and use. The Omaha Public Library and Midtown Neighborhood Alliance partnered to initiate the installation of a weather-resistant bookcase from which neighborhood residents can borrow or swap books. OPL has kept the little library stocked with donated books, which then make their way into individuals’ and families’ possession. Similar to the Trugs, the idea for the little library is borrowed from projects happening in other areas. This one was designed to complement the Trugs and built using leftover Trug materials, but people have expressed interest in seeing more little free libraries around town. Perhaps groups all over town will install and stock little free libraries in their neighborhoods?

Photo by Jaim Hackbart, Inkline Press

Neighborhood Visions

Neighborhood resident, business owner, and artist Jaim Hackbart’s Vision Tree project provided a beautiful and interactive way for individuals to express their hopes and ideas for community improvement. She spent part of each day for a week actively seeking out and engaging other local residents and passersby. Each person wrote their vision on a swatch of paper (made from donated pieces of original art) and tied it to one of the Trug trees. On the final day of the project, Jaim and other area artists each took a 2-hour shift to hand out flowers in the neighborhood and wish each recipient a “nice day.”  As Jaim says, “Transformation begins with a thought…transformation happens with an action.” She has expressed how the project has personally changed the way she sees and interacts with her community and the other people in it.

We have been so moved by the project—its thoughfulness, the impressive number of people involved, and its humanity—that we are currently looking through all the vision notes for something that might spark another creative public space project in the neighborhood that can follow when the Trugs move on.

All of this has happened in just the first two months of the project; we can’t wait to see what happens in the next two months and beyond…

A lot has happened on Shifting Thresholds in the aftermath of Trugs, Stored Potential, and Elevate. We have been working tirelessly on the mapping research, conducting interviews, community engagement, and considering the project’s next evolution. Kayla and I have clocked over 1,500 miles driving around the diverse landscape of Omaha’s southern suburban/rural edge, and have to date interviewed 45 local residents, including farmers, the development community, county officials, and suburban residents. On June 26th, we held a charrette with an advisory team comprised of Sarah Thomas, Sloan Dawson, Emily Andersen, and Drew Seyl. We received critical input about the final stages of research and the project’s future phases.

One major accomplishment of the charrette was developing a strategy for a Shifting Thresholds Trailer, a response to the challenges we discovered while seeking how to best engage the community in the project, beyond the one-on-one interviews. An important part of our proposal for this project was to conduct ‘workshops’ that would solicit more information while engaging folks in its future. We discovered that holding traditional ‘workshops’ in such a decentralized place is inauthentic to what we have discovered about the suburban/rural edge here in the Great Plains. It became apparent that the ‘workshops’ would be most effective if we adjusted them to how the communities actually function – at the scale of the car, where civic activities happen primarily in privately owned public spaces, and with a few key places where the different sectors of residents (farmers, developers, etc.) cross paths – parades, churches, and grocery stores.

The trailer, designed and built by Design Fellow Nick Rebeck and super volunteer Amy Chittenden, could go to these places and be seen/experienced on the vast road networks characterizing these landscapes. The trailer could be used to visually show how all the components of the research (aerial photography, personal stories, and historical landuse mappings) are beginning to tell a compelling narrative, and act as a catalyst to gather more personal stories and perspectives. One side of the trailer displays Alex MacLean’s aerial photography in addition to a map of the county where people can mark special places. Identifying these important community places is crucial in places where traditional community space is redefined with rapid growth patterns. The other side of the trailer displays a timeline showing specific moments in history affecting growth and development as well as a forum for people to share their ideas and opinions about the future; What characteristics will it have? What values will guide it? What do you envision?

For the weekend of July 20th, Design Fellow Kayla Meyer organized an engagement packed three days for the trailer to travel to different locations around Sarpy County. The trailer debuted at three locations; Shadow Lake Towne Center in Papillion, the Gretna Days Parade, and the Commissary at Offutt Air Force Base. My personal highlight from the weekend was participating in the Gretna Days Parade. Not only was it the first time I was in a parade since being a Girl Scout cookie princess, but the project was received with way more interest than we anticipated from people along the parade route.

Hosting a dinner for 500 people within the confines of a public right-of-way, on a bridge, over another right-of-way is monumental, epic—possibly downright ridiculous.  It is an undertaking that quite easily could be encountered in Midtown Manhattan or Los Angeles where the infrastructure and equipment for such an event already exists. That kind of happening in those kinds of places would seem like a natural occurrence.

In Omaha, however, this infrastructure just doesn’t exist. Or, at least, not frequently and certainly not in this magnitude and extremes.

As a culture we encourage such extremes around food.  People expect more from their experiences with and enjoyment of food.   We have created a food-centric culture, where meals are highly crafted, paired with proper wine, and enjoyed in settings or eateries that help frame unique experiences.  Coincidently, we have also propped up an entire industry of Food Networks, celebrity chefs, cookbooks, and associated paraphernalia that often times allow us to disregard regional traditions and season.

In effect, we use this industry to recreate these experiences in the privacy of our own settings.  Or, we  try to recreate the foods from our childhood when seeking a dining experience.  Recalling what we had for casual dinners with our parents or possibly our grandparents, the simple meals.  Thus reinforcing our communal relationship with food—the notion to eat and share with many.

For ElevATE, Chef Paul Kulik of the Boiler Room has teamed up with HDR and Kiewit Building Group to provide a return to the most primitive relationship to food and space.  Fire has always played the most dramatic and instructive role in how and where people eat and furthermore, as a function of culture, dine.  With that in mind we created an inverted firepit, where the elevated flames are deflected forward to roast from behind rather from below.  The effect is both visually stunning and useful.  We then introduced a vertical spit to allow the meat to roast with direct contact to the fire while still being able to render its juices onto a catch pan of vegetables.  Open fire grills are still quite common.  In the northeast of Italy they have a more regional name: fogolar, or fireplace.   These wood fired ovens often double as cooktops.

Drawing from the temporal pop-up tents of the Burning Man, we have created a setting around a central fogolar, which has been designed to create a cocoon of fire and heat around the vertical spit.  The curvature of the fogolar  facilitates a natural convective current to provide a more efficient and uniform cooking environment.   Smoke and heat are controlled and allowed to naturally ventilate via a central chimney that forms the main support for the structure.  The chimney is created with typical construction site materials such as scaffold post and crossbars, planking and heat resistant tarpaulin.

Translucent debris netting hung from rings of electric metal tubing intimately embraces the fogolar and slightly obscures views from both within and out of the dining area.  As a result, attention remains on the events around the fogolar.  Once the event has transpired, then all materials can be once again utilized in their normal mode.

It is our belief that a meal is incomplete without its accompanying beverage.  We were very fortunate then, when we found out that Matteo Burani from Friuli’s oldest winery, Tenuta Angoris, wanted to be in Omaha and that we would be presenting some of his most regionally appropriate wine straight from a barrel!   This is the communal nexus of space, food, fire and drink.