Environment | IDEAS

SWA Group has announced the 2012 winners of our Patrick Curran Fellowship program, an internal research award that seeks to further the art and science of landscape architecture. We received 29 applications and selected 10 proposals (two were merged into one) that support our fellowship mission as well as contribute to the firm’s reputation as a world leader in the landscape architecture field. Fellows will receive paid time off to work in their project in addition to up to $10,000 in expenses. Here are the Fellowship Winners:

Beyond the Bayou — Pavel Petrov

The goal of Beyond the Bayou is to produce a documentary on landscape architecture that highlights the landmark Buffalo Bayou, Brays Bayou and the entire Houston Bayou waterway network. This project will serve as a catalyst for change in an effort to rehabilitate similar struggling ecosystems.

Digital: Real — Mandana Parvinian and Don Xu

The “design process” is undergoing significant change as a result of the new tools of advanced 3D modeling software. This new process offers designers new forms with sophisticated patterns and spatial curvatures that surpass conventional geometric forms. Visually intriguing, these forms are both difficult to represent in technical drawings and manufacture with conventional methods. This project will explore how these forms become a reality.

SWA Graphic Library — Zane Busbee and Jean Casillas

The goal is to collectively strategize and develop a digital library that would speed up the process of rendering illustrations. The idea is to create an updated and expansive library of graphic materials to assist in the efficiency of creating the renderings and other illustrations. The development of a graphics library will greatly improve the production time of rendering in plan, section, elevation and perspective.

Beyond the Green Myth — Youngmin Kim

This project seeks to revisit current sustainable planning and design methods that the field of landscape architecture has regarded as established principles. Recent scientific articles have refuted these practices, but this project seeks to verify current sustainable planning and design methods based on the most recent scientific data and facts. It also will examine how landscape architecture can incorporate new scientific knowledge to the design.

Hope Initiative — Huicheng Zhong

The goal of this project is to design a courtyard and prepare design development drawings for the Gongxing School, a Hope School in the Sichuan Province. The project also seeks to promote a sense of social responsibility for Chinese young professionals through the media. YOUTHLA, a nonprofit organization cofounded by Zhong, will recruit and direct volunteers to support the project.

Material Research in China — Shuang Yu

The goal of Material Research is to determine materials, local manufacturers and suitable construction methods for the most common material in China. The research will also emphasize on finding construction potentials for local/traditional materials as well as for the use of new contemporary materials in China. Following the research, an open database with this data will be accessible for SWA staff.

Material Reuse — Michael Hee and Alec Hawley

Material Reuse is geared towards providing a better understanding about reuseable material availability/sourcing, costing and implementation. The project seeks to create a template that can provide valuable information to SWA employees regarding investigated materials as well as a structured format for further investigation and reporting in an effort to streamline and encourage greener practices within SWA.

Social Entrepreneurship — Andrew Watkins

As the world’s population shifts to urban cities in the developing world, how can SWA develop a business model that is flexible enough to interact in this exploding market, a market that is 2.5 billion people strong and growing? As designers, we have skills that can affect change in these environments. This project seeks to develop a business model for SWA that can engage in a profitable practice of social entrepreneurship, effectively responding to challenges faced by cities in the developing world.

SWApp and Place App — Yu-Peng Hu and Jihyun Qu

Originally two submissions, the following project is a combination of two similar submissions. The goal of both projects is to connect SWA to the community, professionals, clients and potential clients.

The SWApp seeks to create an app exclusive to SWA that will provide a map service of all SWA projects around the globe. The app will act as an interactive projects tour guide, helping potential clients who seek to visit the firm’s public projects but do know how to get there.

The Place App will allow you to browse through the firm’s current portfolio of design and architecture. It will provide exclusive access into its award-winning buildings in the form of interactive guides when visiting the buildings.

Urban Villages — Judy Qu

This project seeks to observe the changes of urban villages in Guangzhou under the background of urbanization. This project will entail visits to redeveloped and under-redeveloped urban villages, develop case studies on urban and landscape design and create potential business opportunities in China for SWA.

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Posted by Sarah Peck
in Social Impact
on 17 August, 2012

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At first, we thought Patti Purcell thought quite differently than most elementary school principals. My SWA colleagues, John Loomis and Yoonju Kametani, and I were meeting with Patti to get her thoughts about a new outdoor classroom that we were designing for Bel Air School in Tiburon, California. “When students move on to 6th grade and up, all they really want to do is to hang with their friends, so why don’t we make this space for them to learn how to hang? Even a 5th grader needs to know how to hang properly.”

The vision from the school side was to look at the space as an outdoor student lounge where kids can hang out during the recess. But instead of beginning our designs based on our first instinct, we asked “What do the students want?” We asked Patti to have the students draw up their visions of this outdoor space and we would be back in a week to look at their plans. With that exercise in mind, we went back office and sketched our own version of the outdoor lounge space.

A week later, Patti brought the students’ sketches and gathered the teachers that would be involved in this project to look at the designs. The discussion was fruitful, as we walked the school staff through our design thinking, they ideas for a “conflict resolution mosaic path”, a place to display art work, and an area for outdoor learning. We also learned about Bel Aire’s sister school in Liberia and how the school had raised money and built a well for drinking so that students there don’t have to walk 3-5 hours each day to get water, and can use the time learning instead.

With this new awareness, we went back to our office to study the drawings from students. We were amazed by what is in these kids’ minds. The drawings reflect the world and vision they need. We created lists of the icons they drew and the words they used and created a word cloud to help us analyze their designs.

We analyzed the similar and different programs and came up with a revised drawing that included the key components.

The design is pretty much driven by the kids’ programs, and we found a home for the mosaic path, art display, and outdoor learning as well.

The final design incorporates the conflict resolution mosaic path, which resolves the grade changes at the lower hillside and provides a terrace for watching sports activities. The canopy structure uses donations to create recycled sails that can be pulled out to provide shade, making it easier for remote learning with mobile devices, and a comfortable escape from the black or white boards inside. We also created a series of new vine structures by reusing the existing fence and a solar-powered drinking fountain as a reminder of their contribution to their sister school in Liberia.

With the exposure of the project in the news, the school was able to obtain the preliminary funding to get the project going. It is estimated that phase 1 will be complete by August 2012 when students return school from summer break.

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Posted by Scott Chuang
in Social Impact
on 19 July, 2012

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When dry, the banks of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou offer open air, green meadows and winding waters for crowds of people to enjoy along with gorgeous skyline views of downtown. While primarily designed to accommodate floodwaters, the large meadows that are formed between the lower and upper bayou banks also host thousands of people during festivals… Read more »

Buffalo Bayou has the distinction of being Houston’s main geographical reference point. Upon Houston’s founding, the city grid was formed to respond to Buffalo Bayou’s circuitous route as the shipping corridor in and out of Houston. While cargo boats no longer travel up Buffalo Bayou and into the city, it remains a major corridor for vehicles and a connection between downtown and urban neighborhoods west of Downtown.

As a major urban park space, Buffalo Bayou attracts residents and visitors every day as they jog, walk dogs, sit by the water or picnic along the water’s upper banks. The bayou’s flood water path sits untouched by development, leaving a long linear park within Houston’s core urban fabric.

As SWA creates the park’s second phase from Sabine Street to Shepherd Drive, frequent flood events are a major consideration. However, they are not a deterrent. Despite the normal rise and fall of the bayou’s waters, the park will go on.

Water will always be an attractive feature for city dwellers, whether it’s a muddy winding bayou, a brackish harbor, or a roaring ocean. With this in mind it seems only natural that Buffalo Bayou acts as a key gathering place for Houston. When dry, the banks of the bayou offer open air, green meadows and winding waters for crowds of people to enjoy along with gorgeous skyline views of downtown. The setting is a unique combination of natural and city features within Houston’s sprawling suburban landscape.

The large meadows that are formed between the lower and upper bayou banks host thousands of people during festivals and holiday celebrations. During the first weekend of June one such festival took place on Eleanor Tinsley meadow. Attendance at the Free Press Festival was estimated at 92,000 people over the course of the weekend. Part of the reason this site was chosen is because the upper banks of the bayou form a natural amphitheater for the festival’s three main stages. Luckily, rain stayed away that weekend and the bayou did not wash the music away. Thousands of festival-goers got to enjoy Houston and relish the diversity of people and musical taste resident here.

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Posted by Jenny Janis
in Bayou By Us
on 12 July, 2012

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More than half of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas. Of this, 70% of the population is located in developing nations and this percentage is rapidly rising, increasing to about 95% by 2060. Urban populations in developing nations face severe challenges—socially, economically and environmentally. For example, 30% of urban populations worldwide live in slums. As designers, we have skills that can affect change in these environments—we have the ability to coordinate programmatic needs with spatial solutions that improve the quality of life.

As the world’s population is shifting to urban cities in the developing world, how can we develop a business model that is flexible enough to interact in this exploding market, a market that is 2.5 billion people strong and growing? Developing markets are rife with challenges—direct funding capacity, political stability, location and complex social structures to name a few. Yet, these areas are also ripe with opportunities—multifaceted funding interests, abilities to leapfrog technology, innovative organizational models and creative forms of sustainability that are often non-technical. It is easy to understand how the skills we’ve acquired from working on some of the most innovative projects in the developed world could benefit projects in the developing world. Could this also work in the other direction, can we learn skills from working in the developing world that would give us an advantage in the developed world?

A business approach that may prove useful in strategizing how to increase our design work in the developing world is the concept of social entrepreneurship. Though this concept is nothing new, it has attracted increased attention in the last five to ten years, both as a way for businesses to have a greater and more direct impact on issues they find important and as an alternative to international aid models that have increasingly come under criticism for their long-term sustainability. Social entrepreneurship attempts to organize business around a social issue rather than a client. They are mission driven. This model may have multiple clients that each support the engagement of a single issue, possibly with different agendas that are organized and aligned by the entrepreneur. This model is therefore far more challenging in developing and managing clients or funding sources, yet provides distinct opportunities in its ability to focus an organization’s mission. Social entrepreneurship is ground up rather than top down.

Two primary business models exist for social entrepreneurship. As defined by Samer Abu-Saifan in Social Entrepreneurship: Definition and Boundaries, social entrepreneurship can either be a non-profit organization with an earned income strategy or a for-profit company with a mission driven strategy. On the non-profit end of the spectrum, these organizations would aim for mission growth while operating as a self-sufficient entity from their earned income and not reliant on grants or donations in the way that most non-profits currently are. Alternatively, for-profit companies would be aim for profit growth in order to sustain a mission goal.

How can social entrepreneurship be incorporated into the way we do business? How can we explore new funding sources to do project work? What business models are we not considering as the basis for project creation?

References:

Samer Abu-Saifan (2012). Social Entrepreneurship: Definition and Boundaries.

UN-Habitat. State of the World’s Cities.

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Posted by Andrew Watkins
in Social Impact
on 5 July, 2012

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We have found a wonderful use for some beautiful trees that were felled during Hurricane Ike – we are planting them. And yes, we know they won’t grow back. [Watch the short video.] Our Houston office is restoring Flewellen Creek as a part of an eco-community we are designing in Fulshear, Texas. The waterway had… Read more »

We have found a wonderful use for some beautiful trees that were felled during Hurricane Ike – we are planting them. And yes, we know they won’t grow back.

[Watch the short video.]

Our Houston office is restoring Flewellen Creek as a part of an eco-community we are designing in Fulshear, Texas. The waterway had been degraded into a common agriculture ditch over the course of its past life meandering through farms and ranches, but today it has been given another chance as an ecologically rich stream. We are also creating an environment for the habitat that thrives in Flewellen Creek and its floodplain.

Raptors are an important part of this eco-system. We’ve created little brush teepees as habitat zones for their prey: field mice, rodents, frogs and more. But until the wetlands, native grasses, riparian trees and the surrounding prairie-style forest grow-in, there are few trees or even telephone poles for a falcon or hawk to perch on. The Ike trees offer birds of prey a suitable vantage point for their hunt. Even after the landscape is mature, the stumps will endure as an iconic feature of this area.

But the dead trees aren’t the only unique feature of Cross Creek Ranch. Developed by Trendmaker, Cross Creek Ranch is for people who want to live in a community that’s in harmony with its naturalized surroundings. Everything about the eco-community’s setting — from the native grasses and vegetation to the stream, prairie and lakes — is a different aesthetic than what most people are accustomed.

The landscape isn’t only for show. It’s is a working part of the community’s infrastructure. We’ve given the waterway its rightful flood plain. The prairie that this creates sits at a lower elevation than the homes and structures and offers great views while protecting the community during heavy rains and flooding.

Most of the landscape requires less maintenance and minimal irrigation, the places that do need supplemental water pull from the eco-community’s lakes. The lakes are replenished with recycled water from home showers and sinks. After it’s been treated, the water is polished through the wetlands on site.

The tall native grasses keep the ground cooler than mowed turf and their roots go deep – sometimes as deep as 6 feet. This pulls oxygen and organic matter far underground and nourishes the tree roots and the earth beneath our feet – which in turn feeds the grasshoppers and frogs, which feed the birds of prey.

Each component of this landscape is an important part of the cycle of life at Flewellen Creek and the dead trees are giving us a head start on the newly created habitat.

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Posted by MattBaumgarten
in Bayou By Us
on 3 July, 2012

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A hundred years ago, landscape architect Arthur Comey proposed Houston’s first comprehensive city plan. In his plan, Comey envisioned the city’s bayous overlaid with a network of parks and trails. As he wrote, the “bayous and creek valleys readily lend themselves to trails and parks and cannot so advantageously be used for any other purpose.”… Read more »

But in the 1930’s, in response to major floods that engulfed the city, work began clearing, straightening and enlarging the bayous. Flood mitigation projects continued through the 1960s, in some cases eliminating all riparian vegetation and lining the channel with concrete. Construction of thoroughfares and freeways encouraged the spread of the city far beyond Comey’s plan and encroached on lands that might have been intended for bayou parkways.

However in the last 40 years, there has been a proliferation of grassroots organizations and programs to protect and enhance Houston bayous and reduce flooding in environmentally sustainable ways, including the Houston Parks Board, The Bayou Preservation Association, the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the White Oak Bayou Association, the Brays Bayou Association, the Sims Bayou Coalition, the Cypress Creek Flood Control Coalition and the Greens Bayou Corridor Coalition, among others. These organizations, each with a unique point of view depending on the special circumstances of the bayou they represent, all work to influence the outcomes of the primary government agencies whose projects impact the bayous: the Harris County Flood Control District and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

One particular bayou success story has been that of the Buffalo Bayou Promenade. Sponsored by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the 1.2 mile long Buffalo Bayou Promenade is a critical link that connects Buffalo Bayou Park to Houston’s theater district and downtown. Prior to its creation, development had turned its back on this portion of the bayou. Freeway structures blocked light and shed sheets of water off their sides during rain storms. Pedestrians in this portion of the bayou were more than 30′ below the grade of the surrounding streets, out of view and with few access points. Invasive plantings were overgrown and created unsafe walking conditions.

Forward to today. Re-grading of the site helped to improve views into the park while reducing the impact of erosion and improving flood water conveyance. A system of stair and ramp connecting points at each roadway crossing provides safe, convenient and frequent access opportunities and commissioned artwork frames each park portal providing a link between the city’s art district and its historic channel. Buffalo Bayou Promenade is not only a successful park and pedestrian environment but it also provides the city of Houston with highly effective flood control and storm water management.

The success of Buffalo Bayou Promenade is just one story among many of the major change in awareness of the importance of Houston’s bayous. Major works are under way along Brays Bayou, Sims Bayou, Clear Creek, Cypress Creek and White Oak Bayou. These and others are testaments to the persistence of Arthur Comey’s vision and they demonstrate how parks and greenspaces can improve the economy, the environment and the health of the city.

But there is more work to do and there is no better time than the present. Property values throughout Houston will continue to climb and there is now the opportunity to purchase distressed properties along the city’s bayous in the hopes of further revitalizing and expanding Houston’s parks and greenspaces before those properties are sold for development or redevelopment.

The national non-profit organization Redfields to Greenfields hopes to help do just that. Their goal is to acquire adjoining properties along Houston’s major bayous and protect them and convert them from existing industrial or commercial use into greenspace and to help create one continuous greenbelt.

In addition, the Bayou Greenway Initiative – a $480 million effort led by the Houston Parks Board – is working to secure 4,900 acres of new greenspace that will control flooding, provide storm water management and more than 300 miles of continuous hike and bike trails along the bayous.

As a landscape architect and long-time Houston resident, I believe there is tremendous value in preserving, protecting and restoring the city’s bayous. Not only do the city’s bayous provide important natural habitat corridors for plants and wildlife, but Houston’s bayou’s are also an amazing, almost untapped recreational resource for a fast growing urban population and play a vital role in establishing the city’s identity well into its future.

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Posted by KevinShanley
in Bayou By Us
on 1 May, 2012

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Posts Tagged: Environment

Meet Me at the Bayou

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Planting Dead Trees

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Persistent Vision for the Bayous

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