A CORE Future of Sustainability and Healing
Date
2025-05
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Abstract
Description
Gauger-Cobb Middle School, established in 1972, and located in Newark, DE, serves as an ideal site for a landscape redesign due to its potential to improve both educationally and spatially. Newark, on a city scale, is also looking at ways to better integrate sustainable design and community health into its urban fabric. This project will focus on rearranging and designing existing elements, redesigning the outdoor spaces of the school to enhance environmental conservation and sustainability, and promoting student well-being to create a more engaging and educational environment. Key elements will include outdoor learning, green play spaces, native plantings for wildlife conservation, and stormwater management systems like rain gardens and bioswales to address the region’s water management needs. The redesign will also aim to increase accessibility and foster a sense of community in the surrounding area through inviting, functional recreation spaces and physical activity. The surrounding forest area, will act as a conservation park network with trails and signage, to promote environmental stewardship, to encourage outdoor activity, and to connect communities to nature and each other. By taking advantage of this beautiful historic opportunity of provided land, we can create a future for lower-class surrounding communities and utilize the land to foster growth and prosperity for all.
Goals & Objectives
COLLECTIVE OUTDOOR INTERACTION
- Tending to the five forms of cognitive play
- Tending to all student types and needs
- Designing through all of the different classifications of space
OPEN-ENDED OUTDOOR LEARNING
- Connect curriculum to the natural and built environment
- Cultivate collaboration and communication
- Foster curiosity through exploration
RESTORATIVE FOREST WETLANDS
- Control water and riparian restoration
- Designing artful waterbodies
- Woodland conservation & ecological planting awareness
ESTABLISH COMMUNITY CORRIDORS
- Conserving this site to be a core forest area for wildlife
- Creating connecting trails for community interaction
- Creating educational signage to span across the site
Keywords
Landscape architecture, Gauger-Cobb Middle School, Newark DE, Stormwater management, Sustainable design