As part of the University of Buffalo's master plan for campus expansion, the South Ellicott Housing Facility will provide 600 new beds in a LEED Gold certified housing complex. Along with the housing expansion comes an opportunity to design a landscape that provides a pleasant setting for casual gatherings, promotes increased pedestrian and bicycle use, exposes on-site water quality treatment strategies and, with a variety of outdoor learning areas, builds a link to the school's natural sciences curriculum.

The five-acre site is defined by three distinct landscape areas, each supporting a variety of active and passive uses: urban streetscape, campus green and native meadow. Each area also establishes a strong connection to the new building through direct access and views, a bio-swale system that collects and cleans the building's storm water runoff, hedgerows that attract wildlife and a paving pattern that expresses the building's structural system and sustainability system. A series of paving bands, gabion weirs, hedgerows and geothermal well points extend into the landscape, weaving together landscape and architecture, exterior space and interior space, natural and built systems.

Architect: Cannon Design