John worked as part of several research teams, bringing his sustainability knowledge to conversations that involved colleagues from other disciplines, like landscape architecture and transportation planning, as well as community members from a diversity of backgrounds. In all of that work, John’s long experience, generous spirit, and strong sense of humor helped the project teams go well.

The workshops that John helped organize to create a development plan for the University owned land in Rosemount, MN, called UMORE Park, showed his interpersonal skill. He brought to Minnesota some of the world’s best sustainability experts – Joachim Eble Architektur, Atelier Dreiseitl, and Trans Solar – and helped orchestrate the process that led to a truly visionary development plan, illustrated here.

John played a lead role on the team that created development guidelines for Towerside, the former industrial area along University Avenue in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. As the following board shows, John’s diagram, illustrating the vision for Towerside, still guides the work there. Meanwhile the inclusion of “desired outcomes” and “progress” benchmarks for each of the guidelines has made the document an invaluable guide to the development now underway there.

John also contributed greatly to the district design guidelines for Rochester’s Destination Medical Center. He largely wrote the section on “individual sites and buildings,” and that work led to many follow-up consultations with the Destinatio Medical Center on new projects proposed in Rochester. Through these projects, John lives on!

Rochester Destination Medical Center Design Details

• Integrate rooftop mechanical and telecommunications equipment, signage, and amenity space, where appropriate, into the design and massing of the upper floors of the building.

• When decorative lighting is included in the building tower, use energy-efficient fixtures, avoid uplighting and overlighting, and include programmable fixtures that can dim as evening progresses or be turned off during the migratory seasons.

• Design building structures to support solar collectors on the upper level and install if feasible.

• Design building structures to support a green roof on the upper level and install if feasible