Who We Are: Nurture the Positive

Common Ground is a place-based design collaborative that respects and cares for all of life. We work with architects, engineers, artists, writers, non-profits, farmers and communities to help you develop the vision for your project. We chart a unique Discovery Process that unearths the common ground that connects your design project to a person, your organization, ecosystems, and ultimately the larger community that defines place.

Your project is part of and depends upon the living systems it is nested within.  Uncovering the mutual sphere of interaction between your project and its place often unlocks a greater potential for your project.  Through this active engagement your vision emerges with greater vitality by tapping into the natural energy of the living systems of the place.

Discovering the essence of a place means getting in touch with the story it wants to tell.  Time and life's interaction with place tells this story.

Watercolor by: Kawood Lamm.  Inspired by artist Andy Goldsworthy, Kawood painted this ice-spiral structure to represent the "c" and "g" in Common Ground.  Thank you Kawood! We love it!

Common Ground has a special interest in connecting communties to local food.  If your project has the potential to reconnect or build corrdiors to farms or gardens, then it has the power to enroll people's senses and encourage authentic connections to place.  Common Ground looks for and promotes these pathways to wellness that deeply revitalize entire communites by becoming intimate with the true spirit of the place.

What We Do: Diversity For Vitality

Common Ground has two missions: building community by honoring the health of all living systems and the stake they have in revitalizing the whole, and applying our evolving 26+ years of civil, structural and environmental engineering experience in the creation of resilient designs that reflect the essence of place.

The word community comes from two words: common + unity.  What do we all have in common?  We transform energy - by drinking, eating, building neighborhoods, and living. 

Designing or restoring communities to a higher state of embodied energy - beyond mere sustainablitly -  so that all members have access to healthy food and water, aligns with our expertise of looking at all cycles nested in the living systems within a place.

Common Ground explores all of the possibilities of a project's place that lend to building a more resilient community. In finding these connections, we help you articulate the values of your vision through a site design that reflects and restores hope to the very essence of your project's place.

Emergent regenerative design starts at the bottom and at the top. In tandem, we look at the linkages between energy transformations across various scales of space & time that pass through a site.  Our process uncovers the continuum of energy transformations needed to ensure a healthy & robust site - one capable of adaptying and evolving to regenerate itself and the environment within which it coevolves. 

For example, this could mean capturing and retaining stormwater; filtering wastewater; enriching soils; growing food; and designing access to natural waterways to reconnect with the soothing powers of water and nature.  Other examples are discovering innovative ways to retain fresh water within a community; securing irrigation water for use during times of drought; counteracting climate change externalities; building the healthy foundations that attract the ecological diversity needed to maintain and grow the health of the waterways and lands that in turn sustain all of life. 

This integrative design apporach to your site takes your vision and charges it with a positivity that not only restores the place of the project, but nurtures and enlivens the hope of all community members by creatiing interdependent regenerative systems, capable of self organizing and coevolving.

Common Ground walks the talk.  And writes the talk.  Our staff contributes articles to: "Pittsburgh Sustainable Agriculture". The writings highlight events that showcase local food happenings; information that raises awareness of local farming challenges; environmental concerns that effect eating, drinking, and writings that speak to the potential perspective change in our cultural constructs that could give rise to the dream of a world that works for the whole of life: Justice/Sustainability/Compassion...universal values for all living systems.