Environmental Assimilation in South Holland

Award

2018 Student Honor Award

Site

South Holland, IL

Category

General Design - Undergraduate Project

Landscape Architects

Daniel Moozak, Dante Bonilla, Bryan Grill, Xueling Hu

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Project Details

The site is located at South Holland in Cook County which is known for its rich biodiversity and abundant forest preserves in Chicago region. After the damming of Little Calumet River flows from Indiana at the east side of South Holland joining with the Thorn Creek from the south, South Holland became the vulnerable point of flood. During heavy rain event, flood water come join the river with high velocity and large volume. Our site was selected beside the flooding river and next to the forest preserve as an opportunity to mitigate flood issue as well as enhancing the biodiversity value and identity of South Holland by using native planting to create habitat for local species and offers educational opportunities. The design goal is to contain the most volume of water and slow down the velocity of water to mitigate the flooding as well as preserve the habitats and biodiversity in South Holland as their symbol. Through rainwater stimulation experiment, I finally selected four strategies to slow the water down to convert the vacant concrete northeast site to a channelized river and pools with island habitats for wildlife without the heavy interruption of the forest preserve area.

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