3 Strategies for Vibrant Communities

Recently, I shared an overview of our three core principles for community revitalization on Io LandArch’s social media channels. When creating this content, it struck me that there’s much more to delve into on this subject, along with some pertinent case studies. So, let’s dive in… Whether your community is expansive or compact, there are […]
Reviving Communities: 5 Lessons from Historic Home Restoration

As a Historic Home Restoration survivor, veteran community organizer, Landscape Architect/Architect, and Urban Designer, it has occurred to me numerous times over the past 2 decades just how much restoring a historic home is a microcosm of community revitalization. Historic structures are an essential building block of successful community revitalization, but the parallels go much […]
Designing for TV: A Crash Course with Extreme Makeover

We recently had the opportunity to volunteer, by providing Landscape Architectural services for two very deserving families, on the hit TV show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”! The episodes are 1002 and 1003 and we are looking forward to seeing them air in January 2020 on HGTV! In case you haven’t seen the show (seriously, who […]
From Trial to Advocate: My Preservation Journey

It was a crisp, late winter evening. We were just settling in to watch a movie at our condo in Logan when the phone rang. It was one of those calls that you don’t ever want to receive. It was the Ogden Fire Department. The house that we had purchased just 2 weeks earlier was […]
Reinventing Community Engagement

Over the course of 20 years of professional and individual community engagement, we’ve been to a LOT of different types of public meetings. The best ones are creative and fun with active involvement of participants. They actually work to make a project better. The worst ones are boring, limit community feedback, or worse–collect feedback and […]
Lester Park Design Competition

The results of the Lester Park design competition have been announced. And the winner is… “Community Tapestry” by Io Design Collaborative’s own Shalae Larsen with team members Jake Alex McIntire and James Argo! The competition was held by the Utah Chapter of the AIA Young Architects’ Forum and Urban Design Committee. Many hours of volunteer […]
(re)PARK on Historic 25th

Io Landscape Architecture, in conjunction with Carbon Architects, hosted the first ever PARK(ing) Day in Ogden on September 20, 2013. Watch the brief video below, where Landscape Architecture Principal Shalae Larsen outlines the project’s concepts and goals. We extend special thanks to Johnson Media Corp. for putting this together. Shalae also appeared in another featured video by Only […]