PERIS Hill will soon celebrate its fifth anniversary. A celebration that will coincide with the release of a five-year case study that attempts to document how PERIS Hill was conceived, built, and refined in practice. Even in draft form, the case study already clearly identifies something that has become increasingly apparent over the last few years: what we have created in PERIS Hill is less a rigid formula, and more a living system. A model that at its core, relies on the presence of a number of foundational approaches for form, strength, flexibility and resilience. Simple, easily articulated approaches that, when taken together, form something innovative, coherent, and (importantly) replicable.

John and Denise Graves built their kitchen-table start up into a 150-employee company and sold it for over $150 million. Shortly after the sale they launched the John and Denise Graves Foundation (also known as Graves Foundation) - determined to improve the lives of youth by supporting education, community building, housing, and youth development in and around Minneapolis. A few years later PERIS Hill became a reality and the PERIS Foundation was formed.