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“Drylands Resilience Initiative” awarded 2015 Latrobe Prize

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Rebecca Maloney Rebecca Maloney Americas Press Office ,Boston
30 March 2015

The $100,000 award will fund development and testing of a proprietary design tool that supports water-challenged communities to capture stormwater resources.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) College of Fellows has awarded the 2015 Latrobe Prize to the Arid Lands Institute for its “Drylands Resilience Initiative: Digital Tools for Sustainable Urban Design in Arid and Semi-Arid Urban Centers.”

Arid Lands Institute co-directors Peter Arnold and Hadley Arnold led a team that includes Arup’s Rowan Roderick-Jones; Deborah Weintraub, Los Angeles Department of Public Works; and Leigh Christy and John Haymaker, Perkins+Will.

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Latrobe Prize funding comes at a crucial stage in the tool’s development, as we continue to build it out and test it. Ultimately, the Drylands Resilience Initiative will result in a fully automated tool that supports communities and design teams developing distributed infrastructures, absorptive landscapes, innovative building systems, and water-smart public policy for drylands urbanism. The tools and systems developed and tested in Los Angeles will have potential applications in drylands globally. ” Peter Arnold Principal Investigator and Director of Research for the Arid Lands Institute

The Latrobe Prize, named for architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, is awarded biennially by the AIA College of Fellows for a two-year program of research leading to significant advances in the architecture profession. The $100,000 award will enable the team to further develop and test “Hazel,” a digital design tool that aims to enable arid communities to design and build the infrastructure needed to capture, retain, and distribute stormwater runoff. 

The technology builds on previous public- and private sector-funded research to maximise low-carbon localised water supply; shape water-smart urban planning, zoning, and building policy; identify key sites for public and private investment; develop pilot projects that are scalable and replicable; build water-conversant design professions; and support water-sensitive design education. Arup’s Water and Energy Resource Characterization Model (WERCM) and Rainwater Harvesting Analytics with GIS (RHAGIS), both projects internally funded through Invest in Arup (IiA) and managed by Rowan, offer two fundamental capabilities of the future integrated “Hazel” model; footprinting embodied resources in water and energy portfolios and optimising rainwater storage volumes based on daily, triangulated rainfall data.

 
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The critical global issue of securing low-carbon and sustainable urban water supplies within arid urban centres affects billions of people around the world. We were impressed with the overall research plan, the working partnerships that were part of the proposal, and the social justice that was at the centre of the research. The Arid Lands Institute and its Drylands Resilience Initiative model a new way for design professions to partner with scientific and public policy communities to catalyse public imagination and action in the face of growing climate challenges. ” David Conrath AIA, Dean of the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at the University of Maryland and chair of the 2015 Latrobe Award Jury

The "Drylands Resilience Initiative" was selected by a jury of AIA Fellows following a presentation of research programmes by finalists. 

Arup has long been a driving force in resilience planning and implementation for cities, organisations, and assets.