During its meeting on May 5, the DuPage County Stormwater Management Committee presented awards to winning student groups chosen from this year’s 20th annual Sustainable Design Challenge.
A team of two York High School students—seniors Allyson Kent and Siha Kim—won the “Best Stormwater Design” award.
The Sustainable Design Challenge is an annual competition put on by SCARCE and other DuPage County affiliated businesses, non-profit groups, and governmental entities that invites students to work collaboratively to take on the role of being architects to design a building that is environmentally friendly. Participants focus on conserving resources, managing stormwater, and reducing their carbon footprint. The choice of the type of building is up to the students. There are three categories of awards to recognize outstanding work at the competition—Best Overall Design, Best Energy Efficient Design, and Best Stormwater Design.
Kent and Kim won the “Best Stormwater Design” award for their design of a cottage in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Some key stormwater features were a green roof, native plant lawn, and rain barrels. Other unique features were cork insulation, kenaf as building materials, and fritted windows to help with birds not flying into the large windows they included in their building.
