Students from Professor Greg Kessler’s junior architectural class at Washington State University pulled out all the stops designing buildings and sites to draw green businesses and jobs to the Auburn Environmental Park.

Ideas rife with devilishly clever uses for columns, roofs, walls and floors, one plan featuring a wetland observatory, a number of plans that include the humble blackberry bush.

City officials took a look at the 16 3-D models, gave a listen to the students and were simply gobsmacked.

“I thought the way you translated that space was way outside of anything that we see when we look there,” Councilmember Lynn Norman told the students Monday evening at a meeting of the Planning and Development Committee at City Hall.

“You pulled elements into your design like the blackberry bush that we see as a nuisance but you see as something beautiful and something to develop,” said Councilmember Nancy Backus.

“I guess we better cancel the goats for eating the blackberries,” added Deputy Mayor Sue Singer.

The AEP is bounded by 15th Street Northwest to the north, the Interurban Trail to the east, West Main Street to the south and State Route 167 to the west. The vicinity west of SR 167 encompasses a segment of Mill Creek. The idea is to create open space in an urbanized area while offering opportunities for economic development, water quality improvement, storm water detention and flood control, fish and wildlife enhancement, public education, and recreation, including hiking trails and bird viewing amenities.

In 2009 Singer and Councilman Rich Wagner set out to bring green jobs and businesses to the AEP. To get them, they realized, they would have to have buildings and sites attractive to owners of green businesses. For help, they turned to an old friend, WSU. The City had already worked with Wagner’s alma mater on several projects aimed at creating jobs and business in the AEP.

Kessler, director of WSU’s school of Architecture and Construction Management, decided to have his junior architectural class design the buildings and sites. Students began work in January, visited the AEP in February, learned what the City wanted and went back home to Pullman.

Last Monday, a mere eight weeks from that February visit, the students returned to Auburn with their 3-D models and boatloads of ideas to give the locals a look.

Kessler split his students into four teams that stressed roofs, columns, walls or floors in their designs. All of the buildings were designed to embody a “green aesthetic.”

Here is how budding architect Shane Fagin, 27, described his project.

“I was taking cues from the existing trees on the west side of the park, and I felt as though the trees could be thought of as columns, so I kind of used their existence to help inform my building,” said Fagin. “So, as the tree’s greenery grows on the outside, I allowed the screen that encompasses most of my building to have a biofill production that has the algae growing on it. And then, when you move further in, you get more of the structure of the tree, so I allowed the structure to be the next row of columns the triangular ones to grow around the buildings and then the further in you go you get the actual inner core of the building, so I have circular columns, much like inside the tree where you have the water transportation.”

Fagin’s classmate, Michael Lucas, 21, emphasized the roof.

“I have it interact with one of the site elements, and one of the predominant elements was the blackberry bushes. I thought that was the most interesting part of the site as well as meeting the challenge of building on the wetland,” said Lucas. “So my thought on it was there’s a man-made lake that’s on the west side of the site, and I was really interested by habitat, particularly for migratory birds. So I decided to incorporate a green roof on top of the building. That way, people could interact more with the site, have views of Mt. Rainier and there would habitat for wildlife.”

Marisa Hagney, 21, drew her inspiration from the blackberry bushes but chose to overemphasize the walls.

“I was interested in the visitors, the bike riders connection to the wetland,” Hagney said. “I felt that visitors who used the Interurban Trail would be more intrigued by what’s on the other side of the blackberry vine if there were some kind of visual cue. That’s why I chose to overemphasize my walls by about four or five stories. The first thing the visitor on the bike trail notices is these 4-to-5 story walls that say to them, ‘There’s something on this other side, so I want to explore this.’ So they are drawn underground instantly to a wetland observatory just like a visitor to a museum or aquarium, and they can look up into a section or cut, see a view of another organism’s life. I wanted to make wetland vegetation more accessible to Auburn citizens.”

Wagner was impressed with the designs for offering green elements that go well beyond the more practical environmental sustainability elements of LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system for “how green” a building is. LEED includes elements like vegetated roofs, recycled grey water, geothermal heating and rain gardens.

“I’m really pleased by the results,” Wagner told the students. “You stayed on track for the aesthetic piece that delivered practical solutions, and I think this will be a really valuable tool.”

In addition to presenting their work to the City, the students and Dr. Kessler presented to a group of professional architects at BLRB Architects in Tacoma on Monday morning.

The AEP is bounded by 15th Street Northwest to the north, the Interurban Trail to the east, West Main Street to the south and State Route 167 to the west. The vicinity west of SR 167 encompasses a segment of Mill Creek. The idea is to create open space in an urbanized area while offering opportunities for economic development, water quality improvement, storm water detention and flood control, fish and wildlife enhancement, public education, and recreation, including hiking trails and bird viewing amenities.

In 2009 Singer and Councilman Rich Wagner set out to bring green jobs and businesses to the AEP. To get them, they realized, they would have to have buildings and sites attractive to owners of green businesses. For help, they turned to an old friend, WSU. The City had already worked with Wagner’s alma mater on several projects aimed at creating jobs and business in the AEP.

Kessler, director of WSU’s school of Architecture and Construction Management, decided to have his junior architecture class design the buildings and sites. Students began work in January, visited the AEP in February, learned what the City wanted and went back home to Pullman.

Last Monday, a mere eight weeks from that February visit, the students returned to Auburn with their 3-D models and boatloads of ideas to give the locals a look.

Kessler split his students into four teams that stressed roofs, columns, walls or floors in their designs. All of the buildings were designed to embody a “green aesthetic.”

Here is how budding architect Shane Fagin, 27, described his project.

“I was taking cues from the existing trees on the west side of the park, and I felt as though the trees could be thought of as columns, so I kind of used their existence to help inform my building,” said Fagin. “So, as the tree’s greenery grows on the outside, I allowed the screen that encompasses most of my building to have a biofill production that has the algae growing on it. And then, when you move further in, you get more of the structure of the tree, so I allowed the structure to be the next row of columns the triangular ones to grow around the buildings and then the further in you go you get the actual inner core of the building, so I have circular columns, much like inside the tree where you have the water transportation.”

Fagin’s classmate, Michael Lucas, 21, emphasized the roof.

“I have it interact with one of the site elements, and one of the predominant elements was the blackberry bushes. I thought that was the most interesting part of the site as well as meeting the challenge of building on the wetland,” said Lucas. “So my thought on it was there’s a man-made lake that’s on the west side of the site, and I was really interested by habitat, particularly for migratory birds. So I decided to incorporate a green roof on top of the building. That way, people could interact more with the site, have views of Mt. Rainier and there would habitat for wildlife.”

Marisa Hagney, 21, drew her inspiration from the blackberry bushes but chose to overemphasize the walls.

“I was interested in the visitors, the bike riders connection to the wetland,” Hagney said. “I felt that visitors who used the Interurban Trail would be more intrigued by what’s on the other side of the blackberry vine if there were some kind of visual cue. That’s why I chose to overemphasize my walls by about four or five stories. The first thing the visitor on the bike trail notices is these 4-to-5 story walls that say to them, ‘There’s something on this other side, so I want to explore this.’ So they are drawn underground instantly to a wetland observatory just like a visitor to a museum or aquarium, and they can look up into a section or cut, see a view of another organism’s life. I wanted to make wetland vegetation more accessible to Auburn citizens.”

Wagner was impressed with the designs for offering green elements that go well beyond the more practical environmental sustainability elements of LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council’s rating system for “how green” a building is. LEED includes elements like vegetated roofs, recycled grey water, geothermal heating and rain gardens.

“I’m really pleased by the results,” Wagner told the students. “You stayed on track for the aesthetic piece that delivered practical solutions, and I think this will be a really valuable tool.”

In addition to presenting their work to the City, the students and Dr. Kessler presented to a group of professional architects at BLRB Architects in Tacoma on Monday morning.