Student design competition - winners announced!

27 July 2006

The waiting is over! Winners of the ‘Auckland student Low Impact Design competition’ were announced today in Auckland.

Sam Blackbourn and Priscilla Chung scooped the top prize and were presented with the winning $2,000 by ARC Councillor Dianne Glenn.

“This was a really exciting competition and the first of its kind in New Zealand. All of the entries were extremely well done and illustrate that the students of today are being well trained to be the leaders of tomorrow. They demonstrated a good understanding of development issues, environmental issues and excellent technical skills in their designs and analysis. It’s a shame that only one team could win”, says Councillor Glenn.

Jointly run by the Auckland Regional Council, Housing New Zealand and the University of Auckland, the competition set Civil and Environmental Engineering students an exciting challenge - to redesign a Glenn Innes site, already in the throes of rejuvenation, using a Low Impact Design approach.

Low Impact Design (LID) is a simple concept. It’s basically minimising creation of rain water and contaminants that runoff and pollute our rivers and streams. This can be achieved by various methods, like increasing vegetation, using rain tanks and creating roof gardens.

Elizabeth Fassman, Civil and Environmental Engineering lecturer at the University of Auckland, was very impressed by the level of knowledge and ingenuity shown by all the competition entrants. Ms Fassman says: “the students pulled together a wide range of resources to develop unique designs. The creativity of submissions highlights the challenge of stormwater management: there is no single ‘right’ answer.”

And what of the winning design? It included clustered housing, a low impact roading layout, the provision of green space and the collection and reuse of rainwater to service all of the 1,500 residents.

Housing New Zealand’s Stuart Bracey, who is managing the Tamaki Community Renewal Project, thought there was a clear winner.

“The winning team demonstrated an understanding of affordable redevelopment issues, as well as the technical skills needed to deal with development issues such as on-site stormwater management”, Mr Bracey says.

ENDS

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