Artful Rainwater Design: Creative Ways to Manage Stormwater by Stuart Echols & Eliza Pennypacker

Author:Stuart Echols & Eliza Pennypacker [Echols, Stuart]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Island Press
Published: 2015-05-19T04:00:00+00:00

CASE STUDY

Arizona State University Polytechnic Campus, Mesa, Arizona

Reduce pollutant loads in rainwater

Reduce downstream damage from runoff

Safely move, control, and contain rainwater

Capture rain for reuse

Restore or create habitat

EDUCATION

Recreation

Safety

Public relations

Aesthetic richness

Figure 4.1. This campus design strives to educate about the unique water conditions of the Sonoran Desert in five different manifestations. Here, the Orchard Canal Court recalls traditional irrigation strategies (design: Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc.; photograph: Bill Timmeman).

Date: 2008

Size: 21 acres

Location: 7001 East Williams Field Road, Mesa, Arizona

Owner: Arizona State University

Designers: Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Inc., Lake|Flato Architects

BACKGROUND

In 1996, Arizona State University (ASU) established a polytechnic campus at the decommissioned Williams Air Force Base in Mesa, about 30 miles from Phoenix. The existing conditions were less than optimal: acres of asphalt prone to flooding, characterized by the design team in their national American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) award submission as having an “oppressive, overpaved ambience.” But ASU had aspirations for this campus: Starting with 1,000 students, by 2006 they had more than 6,500, with plans to reach 10,000 by 2010 in forty degree-granting programs. To reach their goals, ASU needed not only more academic space; they sorely needed an attractive, forward-looking campus identity. Although the university’s site design budget of $5 million may seem large, it had to cover every aspect of this ambitious project: demolition, utilities, irrigation, hardscape, and planting.

The result of this creative design is a campus of five buildings, four courtyards, and a pedestrian mall that celebrates its unique desert context—and water. As the design team stated in their ASLA award submission, “We reinvented what a campus could be in the unique region of the Sonoran desert which only receives 7” of rainfall a year.” Anyone familiar with the desert Southwest knows that rainfall is infrequent, but when it comes, it’s a deluge. Consequently, arroyos meander the natural landscape; these riverbeds are most often dry, but locals know to avoid them after rain events because of the likelihood of torrential water flows. And so the resulting design addresses stormwater by creating a campus pedestrian spine along a designed arroyo that gathers and filters rain from buildings; footbridges crossing the arroyo’s “tributary” canals provide entry into four academic courtyards of differing character, each based on a different regional landscape and water phenomenon. The whole is a cohesive, vibrant campus that connects students and faculty to each other and to their desert context.

UTILITY

The stormwater management concept here is capture, cleanse, and infiltrate. When this site was a military base, 14 acres of asphalt road and sidewalks caused significant flooding. The former asphalt road spine has been transformed into a permeable, water-receiving arroyo that manages all onsite rainwater, paralleling a porous, decomposed granite pedestrian mall. Runoff is gathered from rooftops and hardscapes in each of four courtyards along the arroyo: the Orchard Canal Irrigation Court, the Desert Seep Court, the Cottonwood Sponge Court, and the Tinaja Performance Court. This rain is then piped to four acequias (dry, planted canals) that promote infiltration and, in large rain events, feed the designed arroyo.

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