Case Studies

Client Program

Students in this course work with a rural South Dakota community and create a real-life project that will aid the community. In this case, the students worked with Mobridge, SD, located on the Missouri River. The students found a small section of the town that was undeveloped, but could provide the community of 3500 with a gathering space and a landmark that helped define its relationship to the river.

Why i chose precast for the project

A total of six precast panels were used for this project.

Project Details

First-year architecture students at South Dakota State University are getting an opportunity to do hands-on work on real-life projects in South Dakota. Brian Rex, head of the two-year-old department, is working with the city of Mobridge to give his students a chance to learn by doing and help the north central South Dakota town at the same time. Mobridge has an opportunity to reinvent itself now that the historical rail yards are gone and Main Street can be extended to the banks of the Missouri River. Each student in the Architecture program at SDSU will be taken to Mobridge and assigned a building to draw, model and work with. The process will give the community a chance to see what the project can do for the city. SDSU is home to South Dakota’s first and only professional architecture program. It is the only new school of architecture in the region in the last 100 years. SDSU’s architecture students hail from 24 cities in South Dakota, six states and the country of Honduras. The demand for SDSU architecture graduates is significant, Rex says. “By the time this first class of architects graduates, 75 percent of the architects practicing in the state of South Dakota will be of retirement age,” he says.

Significant Lessons Learned

Plan for the weather!

Precast Used

A total of six precast panels were used for this project. Part of them housed a galvanized frame that overlooks the river. The Sitting Bull Frame for the Mobridge Wrigley Plaza project. Sitting Bull's grave sits about 1500 feet on a bluff across the Missouri River from this project. It isn't obvious where on the horizon he is buried but its interesting that he's buried on axis with the end of the line from Chicago. This spot is where it was agreed for a time that European settlement would stop and beyond would be "Indian Land" independent of the USA. Gold and precious metals in the Black Hills 100 miles further west from here caused us to rethink that deal and, for a time (20 years), everything that went into settling the Black Hills got off a train and went to horsepower from this point forward.