Waterrotonde
Urban Green-Blue Grids
Normal's Uptown Water Circle: Waterrotonde
Normal, Illinois
About:
Designed by Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects, this area serves as a public function and is located near the public transport hub as well as the Children's Discovery Museum. This location makes it extremely accessible, and easy to run into, which for a lot of places, having something like this is not always easy to find in the first place.
Design:
The center of the roundabout is where rainwater is collected from surrounding streets and is stored and purified. This is used as a buffer to help reduce flooding in parts of the town. Similar to some of the living machines, the water is purified using a UV filter and ground filters with vegetation. The water that is purified is also used as a tactic to mitigate the heat, it is often used to spray nearby streets to help "to lessen heat stress."
Discussion:
Having a landscape piece, like this, which engages the community really helps to open people's minds about the processes of the water and sustainability. An installation like this helps to foster and create discussion about water reuse. A landscape feature like this also helps not only with water and possibly flooding control but also helps with creating the quality of water that can then in turn be used on the same site to water the landscape around. Having spaces like this not only helps to contribute to the education of the public but also has so many other benefits, it provides a green area for people to congregate, it also helps mitigate not only the water issues but also heat issues, if there were more applications of the spaces like these around cities, I believe that we would see a dramatic decrease in water flooding problems as well as creating cooler spaces for people to come and gather at.
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