Question 7

Q: With your reality-grounded perspective, could you share a project where you took an innovative concept and translated it into a tangible urban solution that had a positive impact on the city and its residents?

A: Cities are now more commonly requiring extensive landscaping and surface permeability to mitigate the urban heat island effect, and storm-water treatment. The City of Bloomington, Indiana requires that 40% of the site area is not just permeable, but planted! To provide a design solution that met this requirement, but also created a tight knit collection of buildings on an urban grid, we consolidated the landscape space into a large central park, and a paseo connecting to the 3rd street retail corridor. In doing so, the landscape requirement double as a benefit to the public social spaces for the apartments, and larger neighborhood.