DeHenzel Branner portfolio

WALNUT CREEK: RESILIENT URBAN ECOLOGY Walnut Creek, CA LA 201, Fall 2010 Instructor: Karl Kullman This proposal attempts to address issues of urban reslience in Walnut Creek through modifications to the existing hydrological system that expose and augment the creek to create a new civic urban park. My chosen site is downtown Walnut Creek, where the creek itself is currently routed under a generic new urbanist retail center and adjacent derelict single story parking structure. This scheme prioritizes the legibility of the creek by replacing the parking structure with a subsurface garage, daylighting the creek and threading it back into the existing overflow channel that currently runs in a concrete box parallel to Broadway. The creek edges are terraced in a triangulated pattern to allow access in certain areas, where others are planted with wetland vegetation. These planted terrances hold water during seasonal floods and collect irrigation, runoff and greywater from the big box store in dry seasons.