Keynote: Michelle Delk, FASLA

Michelle Delk, a landscape architect and partner at Snøhetta, delivered the keynote session “Slowing Down” at the AIA Colorado Practice + Design Conference, sharing her journey and the firm’s innovative approach to design. Delk, also a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, reflected on her upbringing in rural Iowa, which instilled a deep appreciation for the land and shaped her career. Snøhetta, founded in 1989, operates across four continents and is known for its interdisciplinary collaboration, blending architecture, landscape, and cultural narratives. Their first major project, the Alexandria Library in Egypt, set the tone for their work, emphasizing the relationship between landscapes and buildings.

Delk highlighted the importance of cultural landscapes, shaped by indigenous histories, and infrastructure’s role in connecting and dividing spaces. Her early career at Civitas in Denver and observations from Vancouver Island informed her perspective on designing dynamic and flexible environments. Snøhetta’s projects often adapt overlooked spaces, such as the Calgary Library’s land bridge, which reconnects divided city areas, and the Willamette Falls River Walk, which restores public access to a historic site. The firm’s transformation of Ford’s Dearborn campus introduced biodiverse parks and sustainable mobility solutions, while Gotham Park revitalized forgotten areas near the Brooklyn Bridge.

Recent projects include the Jostle Art Museum expansion, which reoriented visitor access and created immersive gardens, and the Blanton Museum in Austin, where canopy structures provide shade, collect stormwater, and unify the campus. At 550 Madison, Snøhetta redesigned public spaces, adding inviting outdoor rooms, reclaimed materials, and high-quality public restrooms. Temporary installations, like the Guggenheim Ramp 6 garden walk and Venice Biennale teeter-totter, demonstrate Snohetta’s ability to shift perceptions with minimal interventions.

Delk concluded with the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota’s Badlands, a project that integrates sustainable design and ecological restoration. The library’s design reflects the geological uniqueness of the Badlands, with rammed earth walls, a grassland roof, and a boardwalk that immerses visitors in the prairie ecosystem. Sustainability goals include net-positive energy and water, achieved through geothermal wells, solar arrays, and low-carbon concrete. Initiatives like the Native Plant Project and adaptive grazing techniques involve community members in restoring the prairie. Delk emphasized the importance of slowing down to appreciate landscapes and create spaces that inspire connection, joy, and environmental stewardship.

Design for Slowing Down

In our fast-paced digital world where people lose concentration after eight seconds, design has the power to invite people to slow down and truly experience places. This approach can help people connect more deeply with their environment.

So much of what I’ve talked about so far is about calling attention to how we can design with what is already in place around us… this article in Time magazine about how people generally lose concentration after eight seconds… I want to talk a little bit more about how design can invite people to slow down.

Balancing Seriousness with Joy

Design can address serious environmental and social challenges while still creating joyful, playful experiences. The combination of serious purpose with joyful interaction creates stronger communities and more resilient responses to challenges.

So we invited people to be serious. We asked them to consider the impact that we each have on the world around us. But we also asked them to be joyful and to interact and be playful because we really don’t need to sacrifice one for the other. We recognize that sharing joy brings us together, and that leaves a web that’s much stronger when pushed to a challenge.

Site Planning as Creative Foundation

Site planning deserves recognition as one of the most creative moments in design work. It’s the phase where designers first imagine how to build relationships between buildings, landscapes, and contexts, yet it often doesn’t receive the credit it deserves.

Site planning is one of the most creative moments in the work that we do. It’s when we first start imagining how we can build these relationships.

Buildings and Landscapes as Dance Partners

Rather than blurring the distinction between buildings and landscapes, successful design explores the relationship between them. Like dance partners, they work better together, with neither necessarily taking the lead but both contributing to a unified experience.

I don’t really think anyone wants blurry vision… our work is not necessarily about erasing a distinction between buildings and landscapes, but really about exploring a relationship. And I think of this in a way as dance partners where there may not even necessarily be a lead, but we’re better together.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration from Day One

Snøhetta’s foundational approach involves architects and landscape architects working together from the very beginning of projects, not as separate disciplines brought together later. This collaborative methodology starts with developing shared ideas that drive the thinking together at the starting point.

Maybe what’s key is that we start from the very beginning of the project. So this, this is a foundational approach where we develop the ideas that drive the thinking together at that, at that starting point.

Regenerative Land Management as Design

Land management should be considered integral to design, not separate from it. The Theodore Roosevelt Library project demonstrates how ecological restoration, native plant propagation, and adaptive grazing become part of the ongoing library experience and conservation education.

Together with our ecologist Res, we were advocating for land managed to be seen as part of design, that this would be integral to the regeneration of the prairie and creating a healthy landscape.

Adaptation Over Erasure

Rather than acting as agents of erasure, designers should work as editors who carefully preserve, repurpose, and minimally add to existing contexts. This approach can reveal overlooked landscapes and develop climate-resilient, equitable solutions.

So I think of us as designers, in this case acting as editors. We really looked at the forgotten or the overlooked, and we were very careful about what we removed. We repurposed as much as we could, and we very minimally added elements to stitch this together.

Landscape as Library

Natural landscapes can serve as repositories of knowledge and history. The Theodore Roosevelt Library concept treats the Badlands as a library where each geological layer represents a chapter, demonstrating how the landscape itself becomes the primary educational experience.

We started to think about the Badlands itself as a library and that each layer is a chapter in a book… the third idea is that the landscape is the library. That the main building is one of many moments within the larger experience.

Transforming Perception

Small, temporary interventions can significantly shift how people experience and perceive spaces. Simple installations using traditional landscape design elements like framing views and playing with light can create transformational moments without permanent changes.

So we proposed that we could just use very traditional elements of landscape design and think about framing views, layering textures, playing with light and shadow to temporarily alter how people move as they wander through the museum and reach this upper level.

Good Ideas Come from Anyone

Effective design processes involve clients, community members, and experts from the beginning, with every person at the table actively contributing regardless of their design discipline or role. This inclusive approach opens up design thinking beyond traditional boundaries.

We often talk about good ideas can come from anyone. It doesn’t matter what your experience or your background is. And I think this is one way that we can work together to dissolve some of these perceived boundaries between design disciplines and open up design thinking.