MSLA Wins ASLA NCC Honor Award in Analysis and Planning

Honor Award: Heartwood Greenways and Stormwater Masterplan

Project Statement:

In 2019, a series of unprecedented floods ravaged Eastern Nebraska and the greater Omaha metropolitan area. Estimated damages ranged upwards of 1.3 billion dollars: farms were shuttered, families lost homes. Disastrous flooding is becoming the new normal of a changing climate, a problem exacerbated in this region by sprawling urbanization that increases impervious runoff and associated flood-level peak flows. The Heartwood Greenways and Stormwater Masterplan, which anchors a 500-acre development in Omaha, Nebraska, is designed to help protect adjacent communities and farms by mitigating future extreme weather events.

The greenway system is defined by a series of meticulously crafted water detention basins, both functional and beautiful. The project celebrates the process of capturing rainfall and conceives this network of detention basins as a sculpture park. The project explores an expanded role for the design of climate infrastructure, wherein these systems are designed to make legible our changing planet while serving to mitigate the disastrous impacts of these changes.

See all ASLA NCC 2020 Awards here.