Watershed
Winning Landscapes
Landscape architecture students’ design for
dealing with stormwater runoff recognized
by the Environmental Protection Agency
Kent Elliott and Blake Samper's design took home honorable mention.
The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain, but the rain on campus stays mainly where landscape
architects send it.
Planning for
stormwater runoff is an important consideration for any architect, especially
when building in public areas that combine living and work spaces with a high
volume of people. Recently a team of landscape architecture students proved
they were up to the task when they won honorable mention in the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency’s Campus RainWorks Challenge.
As part of their
design studio project, landscape architecture graduate students Kent Elliott
and Blake Samper competed against 218 other student teams from 42 states; the
competition challenged them to create innovative green infrastructure designs
that would promote sustainable community impact.
Elliott and Samper
proposed a design that would replace impervious pavement with permeable paving
and an aqueduct while adding increased tree canopy and vegetation, rain
gardens, green roofs, a rain barrel-staircase, vegetated swales, “hydrowalls,”
and vegetated terraces.
First-place winners
were the Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Florida, while
the Missouri University of Science and Technology and the University of Arizona
took second. To see the full list of winners and view UT Arlington’s entry,
visit water.epa.gov.