PERMEABILITY IN EAST AUSTIN

This project is a dense mixed-use building in East Austin centered around the concept of permeability. As Austin has rapidly grown over the past few decades, more and more of the city has been covered up by concrete and other impervious surfaces, which can result in the mismanagement of stormwater drainage, causing flooding and the erosion of the topsoil in the city. The runoff from impervious surfaces also moves too quickly to be absorbed and filtered by the soil, leaving Austin’s aquifers with less available recharge surface, threatening the supply of drinking water and the flow of local springs.

The City of Austin now requires new development to set aside a percentage of land to be left as permeable surfaces, but this has the perverse effect of reducing density throughout the city. Our proposal is centered around a rainwater collection system that gathers and directs the rainwater from the roof sectionally down through the building and into a series of sunken rain gardens below, capturing all of the rainfall runoff and allowing for density and permeability simultaneously.

This is all in an effort to regenerate the relationship a community and the overall fabric of the city has with the environment. To create spaces for plant life that aren’t limited or organized strictly by the incentives of city code and policies, but are based on the natural flux of storm runoff and water circulation. This project aims to shift the perspective on vegetative retention systems and how they interact with our buildings and the autonomy they should have in architectural spaces.