Description

PROJECT STATEMENT

This project is designed to develop your understanding of and abilities in developing grading and drainage plans as a part of overall planning and design process. Landscape architects occasionally have to work on grading and drainage projects with a given site plan or design. In other words, they get involved with design and planning process after the development of the site plan by other landscape architects, or architects and engineers. The first two projects of this course were examples of such cases. Most landscape architects prefer to work on projects that they can get involved with the design and planning process from the very beginning. In these cases, they start with a given program or problem statement and develop their own site plan or design. Obviously, working on design implementation of your very own site plan is much more enjoyable than working on some other designer’s site plan. This project provides a similar opportunity. 

VandalCorp is a newly formed professional corporation that conducts energy research for the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the UIdaho Research Center. You have been hired as a consultant by VandalCorp to do a site design and prepare some of the implementation documents necessary for their new corporate headquarters and research facility to be located adjacent to the UIdaho Research Park in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. 

Your client has already hired a team of architects and has been working with them to establish building space requirements. They have come up with a preliminary design for a 26,400 gross square foot building (See attached plans and elevations). The client has asked the architectural team not to finalize the building plans until you have had an opportunity to complete your studies. Because architectural plans are preliminary, the locations of windows and all doors are not yet fixed and may respond to your site design. Feel free to make recommendations about the facade of the building, i.e. materials, window and door styles and locations, rooflines, etc. Your client is interested in more than just a functional solution to the problem that meets all building codes and the city requirements. In addition to the influence of function, environment, economics, and culture, the client wants their development to aesthetically express repose, harmony, and inspiration. The client is concerned with aesthetics and how the building will relate to the site and to the earth forms you will be creating on the site. Since the staff, employees, and visitors will extensively use outdoor spaces, your client is looking forward to a design that expresses an optimal relationship of building, land, water, and plants that create inspiring and functional places. They are expecting a strong grading design of which the siting of the building should be a part. In summary, an environmentally sound, aesthetically pleasing, and functional solution are of paramount importance to the client.