For 50 years Design Workshop has been cultivating a pragmatic design ethos, which is shaped by the thoughtful consideration of four guiding principles – environment, community, economics, and art. The sum of the whole is a well-established legacy of design excellence that stretches across 30 different countries in communities around the world.

Mark Smith first laid eyes on what would become Riverfront Park as a child in the 1950s. His father and grandfather both worked in the dairy equipment business and sometimes took him to the rail yards and gritty industrial wasteland in the Central Platte Valley behind Union Station. “It smelled like a slaughterhouse,” recalled Smith,…