RDG Planning & Design Marks 60 Years of Meaningful Work
With 60 years behind and the future in focus, RDG continues designing spaces that matter.
In 2025, RDG Planning & Design celebrates 60 years of shaping environments that foster connection, resilience and impact. Since its founding in 1965, RDG has remained rooted in the belief that design has the power to improve lives. That commitment, shared by the firm’s founders and reinforced by generations of designers and planners, continues to guide RDG’s work today.
RDG’s story began in Omaha, Nebraska, where Charlie Wilscam launched a solo practice that soon grew with the addition of Don Mullins. A year later, Ken Bussard and James Wilkins established their firm in Des Moines. Though they started independently, the firms shared a collaborative spirit and a dedication to meaningful design that would eventually bring them together. By 1989, after years of professional connection, the two firms united as Renaissance Design Group, a name that reflected their growing partnership and vision for the future.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, RDG expanded its capabilities and reach. The firm added planning, landscape architecture, civil engineering, lighting design, graphic design and integrated public art to its growing list of services. By 2002, the complexity of multiple identities prompted a pivotal unification: the firm formally adopted the name RDG Planning & Design. This era marked a significant expansion of services, with civil engineering, lighting design and integrated public art added to the firm’s offerings. Additional key partnerships included the merger with landscape architecture firm Crose, Gardner & Associates (which, coincidentally, was also founded in 1965), and the additions of the RDG Dahlquist Art Studio in 2006 and Wetherell Erickson in 2008, whose roots stretch back to 1892.
Today, RDG operates from offices in Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Wisconsin, collaborating across disciplines to deliver integrated, human-centered solutions. Its team of more than 230 people includes architects, interior designers, landscape architects, lighting designers, graphic designers, planners, artists and engineers, all working together to shape inclusive, sustainable environments that positively impact people and the planet. The firm’s work encompasses more than 20,000 projects across 48 states and multiple countries, from public parks and civic spaces to places for learning, healing, gathering and living. In communities large and small, the impact of RDG’s 60 years of work can be seen and felt by the students who walk campus quads, the families who find joy in neighborhood parks, the patients who experience dignity in healing spaces and the neighbors who gather in places designed to bring people together.
Each project tells a story of connection between people, purpose and place. Together, they form a legacy built on creativity and community. As RDG marks this milestone, it does so with a renewed commitment to designing noteworthy spaces, for the next 60 years and beyond.