Students’ future-thinking recognised

Students’ future-thinking recognised

The winners of an Auckland Regional Council (ARC) sponsored competition for University of Auckland students to design an environmentally friendly housing development in Hobsonville have been announced.

The competition was jointly sponsored by the Housing New Zealand Corporation with support from The University of Auckland and the Hobsonville Land Company.

The annual Auckland Low Impact Design Competition, now in its fifth year, is open to students of civil and environmental engineering and urban design.

The brief was to design a low impact design system for a new housing development. Low impact design is the term given to design techniques that reduce stormwater run off. Across Auckland contaminated stormwater heads into streams and creeks and eventually the sea where it affects marine life and water quality. Much work is currently underway to find better solutions to this problem.

The winning teams presented their designs at Auckland Regional Council on July 13. The overall winners were Sebastian Ichim, Seok Ho Kim, Young Sun Lee, Harold Xue, and Jeremy Wilks who received a prize of $750. Runners up were Minyi Guo, Jens Hvas, Chris McCarthny and Yanina Silva who received $500. Third place went to Joshua Hodson, Jordan Curtis, Jun Tak Lee and Sakti Gounder who received $250.

ARC Environmental Management Committee Chairperson Councillor Dianne Glenn said that the council funds the competition to introduce students to good stormwater solutions as part of its wider efforts to encourage low impact design solutions in the region.

“This competition is a great way for students to get hands-on experience of low impact design in a real world setting. Construction projects in Auckland and internationally are increasingly employing low impact design techniques and just this week it has been announced that low impact design has been embedded into the revised New Zealand Land Development and Subdivision Infrastructure Standard. This is great news.”

Competition judge and Faculty of Engineering Senior Lecturer Dr Elizabeth Fassman said the entries were technically very good this year. “With an environmental protection brief in hand, students designed on site solutions that exceeded minimum standards for stormwater removal,” she said.

Katja Leitz from the Hobsonville Land Company said, “The assignments that stood out took time to thoughtfully explain context, constraints (such as lack of urban design expertise), and the options and reasons for making trade offs. They also made specific reference to the need to balance low impact design interventions so as not to over-engineer the area.”

ENDS