•Cliveden Park is a city park in the East Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.  Historically, a stream flowed through the area.  The stream has long been encapsulated in a combined sewer in adjacent streets, but there is still a depression and damp low area in the park where the stream once flowed. 

The students are tasked with designing a plan to divert stormwater  from the park and surrounding streets into the depression and convert it into a stormwater management facility that is an amenity for the park.  There are several constraints on the project: budget, NPDES permitting restrictions (the depression area has been deemed a wetland area), community considerations and existing park conditions (trees and steep grades).

 

The issue of urban voids and stormwater

Many of the streams in Philadelphia are now encapsulated into sewers.  There is an emerging movement to daylight these streams.  Philadelphia and the Van Alen Institute teamed up to create a competition to develop ideas to change Philadelphia's vacant land into a viable city space.  The winning idea linked urban voids through stormwater and daylighted stormwater was a prominent feature of the design.