CURRICULUM

TANYARD CREEK MEANDERS THROUGH MAJOR DISCIPLINES OF NEW COLLEGE
by David E. Elden
MLA '04

The summer of 2002 saw students from all disciplines joined under the College of the Environment and Design come together to produce practical solutions to an environmental problem. The urban stream restoration studio led by CED Dean Jack Crowley took on the challenge of reviving and healing Tanyard Creek, the urban waterway passing through the middle of the University of Georgia.

The course began with a field trip to North Carolina State University to experience that school's urban stream restoration project. Rocky Branch Creek, which runs through the urban fabric of Raleigh, NC, as well as NC State campus, shares many traits with Tanyard Creek and gave the students much information to use while designing a solution for the Georgia stream.

Throughout the summer, class members from ecology, landscape architecture, engineering, and education sloshed their way along several reaches of Tanyard Creek collecting data as they went. A presentation of preliminary findings was made to university planners and professors as well as outside design professionals. After this, the class divided into three design teams for the next stage of the studio. Many hours were spent sketching down ideas and debating the pro’s and con’s of altering the urban landscape to allow Nature’s return. The three design groups, the Thalwegs, J-Hooks, and Fluvial Five, presented their concepts before each other and then combined ideas to produce two final design solutions.

Both concluding proposals shared the view of a restored Tanyard Creek complete with a realignment back to its historic meandering, a repaired floodplain and a trail system bringing people to the water’s edge inside an newly created educational park. Also captured in the two schemes is a refined pathway for the notable “Dawg Walk” football march where players take a celebratory march into Sanford Stadium while hundreds of fans cheer the team on to an anticipated victory. The two proposals, along with preliminary research and data, were presented in July to university planners, city leaders, and concerned students in the basement of the newly renovated Napa Building on Broad Street.

This page last updated June 13, 2003.

University of Georgia | Institute of Ecology | School of Environmental Design
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