Shaping
the Future of the South Shore
Design Workshop holds a competition every year to find the nation’s top landscape architecture, planning and business students, gathering them together for a 10-day charrette aimed at creating solutions to challenging issues at no cost to local communities. The interns then work for 10 weeks in one of the firm’s seven U.S. offices. This year’s intern charrette tackled issues of community and connectivity, as well as traffic congestion and environmental concerns in this resort town on the south shore of Lake Tahoe. Interns began work on June 1 and made a public presentation of their proposed solutions on June 10. City council members who attended that session invited interns to show their work again to council members and others in a session yesterday. The Tahoe basin has long been popular as a year-round tourist destination, but facilities and infrastructure have not kept pace with the demands of visitors or permanent residents. The intern team of 14 students of landscape architecture and two MBA interns focused on the U.S. Highway 50 corridor into town, dealing with issues of transportation, workforce housing, recreational access, visitor and community facilities, scenic views, the environment and funding issues. The plan aimed to foster a healthy balance between a vibrant economy and Tahoe’s spectacular natural environment. Since 1985, Design Workshop’s internship program has attracted gifted scholars of landscape architecture, architecture, urban design, planning and business from all over the world. Student charrettes have dealt with rail-yard conversions in Calgary, Alberta, and Phoenix, Arizona, and light-rail planning between Colorado ski areas and Denver.
|
This
year’s Design Workshop internship charrette may have a bigger
impact than anticipated, given the local response. The 10-day study
gave local officials fresh ideas for reclaiming the charm of Tahoe’s
surroundings, a vision so compelling that members of the South Lake
Tahoe City Council asked interns to give their presentation again
yesterday to the full council. 
“I
was so encouraged by the unconventional thinking and the imaginativeness
of what the interns had come up with that I urged them to make another
presentation,” says Council Member John Upton. “We want
to have some of our people look real hard at this to see if it’s
a reasonable prospect. If we can make it pencil, then we just need
to start making deals.” 
The
interns divided the corridor into three sections. The plan configures
the typically congested “Y” intersection with California
State Highway 89 in the western part of town into a gateway for
the city, enriching it with a transit center and dense, mixed-use
complexes connected by pedestrian bridges over the highways. For
the Sierra Tract, an auto-dominated residential area cut by several
waterways, the plan envisioned creating a pedestrian-friendly village
core and gracing the waterway edges with trails. The vision for
Eldorado Beach, which is currently occupied by a campground, transforms
this area into the cultural, civic and recreational heart of town
with amenities like an amphitheater and a pier with a water taxi.
The interns evaluated each part of the plan on the merits of its
design, market appeal, regulatory compliance, political feasibility
and financial viability, with help from members of the community
and principals of the firm.
| We received over 230 applications and 16 very talented students joined us for the Summer. Congratulations! View the original problem statement Download
the final Charrette Presentation Download the Tahoe Charette Book and Addendum (4.2 MB) Article Links
|