44

AIAFEATURE

Make
Grounding architecture within
a larger building ecology.
 

No Small
may 2011

Plans
illustrations: uacdc and habitat for humanity

pavers:
donated material,
provides semi-
permeable surface
aiding in recharge crushed brick:
byproduct of brick-manufacturing
process, provides a permeable
surface that aids in filtration of
stormwater

UACDC and Habitat

for Humanity’s
redevelopment project
for 17 homes centers
on a natural watershed
process to clean
and recycle water in
Rogers, Ark. While
water is a regional
concern, its effective
treatment begins at
the local level.
 45

regional issues such as stormwater treatment and energy

production have become major elements of the design of architectural
projects, even at a very small scale. As demand for natural resources
rises and the impact of pollution spreads, taking these issues into
consideration is likely to become a more important part of urban
planning and architecture. This year’s national AIA convention
recognizes the shift with its theme “Regional Design Revolution:

may 2011
Ecology Matters.”
bioswale: But many argue that the long-term thinking of regionalism is still
facultative vegetation aids a burgeoning concept.
in phytoremediation and “The time frame that our culture works on is far too short when
pollutant removal—“right we look at how long cities actually last,” says Tom Christoffel,
plant, right place” AICP, editor of Regional Community Development News, a bimonthly
newsletter tracking regionalism in planning and architecture.
A building is not just a building. It’s part of the ecology of the
built environment—a vast interconnected web of components and
elements as varied as transportation, water, jobs, and energy. These
are the concerns faced by the regions within which buildings stand.
credit

Increasingly, macro long-term concerns are weaving their way into

the design processes of architects and planners.
A number of projects nationwide epitomize detailed consideration
of regional issues, from energy production to transportation
infrastructure to affordable housing. Water is often seen as the most
important regional concern. With watersheds and aquifers that can
grasscrete: span states and serve tens of millions of people, it is increasingly
permeable surface important for projects to use both an appropriate amount of water
with facultative and reduce reliance on aging water infrastructure and centralized
vegetation, provides water-treatment facilities.
sediment control and This was the main goal for Habitat Trails, a 17-unit neighborhood
recharge capacity development in Rogers, Ark., designed as low-income housing by
the University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC).
Low Impact Development (LID), an emerging set of standards for
utilizing natural watershed processes to clean and recycle water,
guided the Habitat for Humanity Project. The site will essentially
work as a sponge, absorbing all rainwater and runoff without
expensive and inefficient pipes, catchbasins, and curbs and gutters,
concrete and asphalt: according to Stephen Luoni, Assoc. AIA, director of the UACDC.
concrete used at sidewalks,
asphalt used at roads;
asphalt is more pervious than Designers for Habitat
concrete and is used where Trails call for parks, not
current codes will allow pipes, in creating an
ecological system that
can be linked to other,
Up to 47 percent of surface pollutants can be removed
regional systems.
in the first 15 minutes of a storm event, including
pesticides, fertilizers, biologically derived materials,
and litter. … Pervious surfaces that capture stormwater
runoff increase opportunities for pollutant removal and
attenuation of flow velocity.
46
Absorbency served as the dominant design parameter and the first
step.“Once we had determined an ecological fabric that can function
within a predevelopment hydrological model, then we went in and
proposed the roads and houses,” says Luoni. “Water-management
infrastructure is designed not to exceed the carrying capacity of the
may 2011
Projects of regional scale like these do
exist, and their numbers seem to be
growing. But for many veterans in the
field, those numbers are still too low.
site’s landscape to biologically treat stormwater runoff. It’s starting in
the exact opposite way that conventional developers start.”
That approach may catch on. Of the six housing units already
built, Luoni reports that the water absorption and treatment capacity
of the site have already exceeded expectations.
The project has also won numerous awards, including the 2008
AIA Honor Award for Regional and Urban Design.
Another inventive regional design is Lopez Common Ground by
the Seattle-based architecture, planning, and landscape architecture
firm Mithun. Located on Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands north
of Seattle, the project’s 11 homes on seven acres are designed to be
both highly water- and energy-efficient. Photovoltaic solar-panel
and solar-thermal systems provide energy and water heating for the
project, which approaches net-zero-energy consumption, according
Sasaki Associates and SOM’s
Lakeside master plan for
Chicago integrates former
industrial land into a mixed-
use, medium-density
community model.
itrti: i cite, ic. d idre, i  erri 
to Mithun principal Mark Shapiro, AIA. Catchment systems in this
rainy climate provide all the water for the neighborhood’s toilet
flushing, clothes washing, and irrigation.
But water and energy aren’t the only concerns. Once a primarily
working-class community, this small island about 65 miles from
Seattle has steadily transformed into a weekend retreat and vacation
spot for mainlanders, pricing island service workers out of their
homes. The response from Mithun and its client, the Lopez Island
Community Land Trust, was to build affordable housing.
This is just one Mithun project that takes a regional approach to its
design. Shapiro says that responding to the natural environment has
become an integral part of the firm’s design process.
“Once one starts to look at things from that point of view, the
idea of scale jumping becomes really important,” Shapiro says.
“It’s about how any individual project, no matter how small it is,
can really contribute to a larger strategy.”
Neighborhood planning takes on even more importance as
the scale increases. On the south side of Chicago, the location of
a former steel-manufacturing plant that’s been unused for years
is the site of some innovative, large-scale, and regionally sensitive
planning. The Lakeside master plan by Sasaki Associates and SOM
would replace the disused 460-acre plant with a 13,500-person
medium-density, mixed-use community. Located directly on the
shore of Lake Michigan, this project proposal is notable for using and
integrating former industrial land into the urban fabric. The master
plan also includes 100 acres of lakefront park space, part of which fills
in an empty segment of a regional waterfront park system.
Again, water is the crucial consideration. Because Chicago has
a shared hard infrastructure for its stormwater and sewage, major
 47

Green alleys Bioswales Biofiltration and infiltration

Green roofs Pervious pavements

may 2011
ction
Colle

Conveyance

Passive rainwater absorption would reduce

Lakeside’s burden on an already overtaxed
regional water system.

rain events cause major pollution problems in the lake. The master
Rainbow Implementation of the plan accounts for this potentially hazardous regional condition, and
Park Lakeside master plan, rainwater passively absorbs into about 90 percent of the project’s
Existing
Filtration approved by Chicago City footprint. Reducing the stress on an already overstressed urban water
Plant
Council in 2010, is slated infrastructure system was a priority, according to Sasaki president
to begin in 2013. Dennis Pieprz.
79th Street “And we did it in a way that made it ecologically visible,” says
Lake Michigan Pieprz. “It was expressed as part of the aesthetic of the public realm,
so you could see how the cleansing and the design of the wetlands
were operating.”
The master plan was recently approved by the Chicago City Council,
and major work on the 25-year vision is expected to begin in 2013.
83rd Street Projects of regional scale like these do exist, and their numbers
seem to be growing. But for many veterans in the field, those numbers
are still too low. Daniel E. Williams, FAIA, has long been a practitioner
of ecologically based planning and design that addresses regional
issues, including climate change, sea-level rising, and post-disaster
planning. His 2007 book, Sustainable Design: Ecology, Architecture and
87th Street Planning, calls for an expanded definition of sustainability in design
that considers not only a region’s environment, but also its economy
and social structure over a time scale of hundreds of years.
“What we all need to be doing is learning more of the science—in
Proposed particular on climate change, ecology, and hydrology—and finding
r
South ive out how regional systems actually contribute to the health of the local
Chicago etR
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92nd Street
Park Ca economy and community,” he says.
Ch
Once architects and planners develop this understanding, more
ica
go projects will begin to actively recognize and respond to the ecology of
Sk
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