UF students develop design ideas for Alachua County Resource Recovery Park

March 24, 2011

WHAT: In the 2011 Witters Competition, student design teams at the University of Florida College of Design, Construction and Planning will compete for a $3,500 prize as each team races to create designs and solutions for Alachua County’s proposed Resource Recovery Park project.

WHEN: Following visits to the site, teams receive the project at 3 p.m. Friday. From this point on, they have just 48 hours to complete and submit their projects, as presentations to judges begin at 4 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: Rinker Hall on the UF campus.

BACKGROUND: In the real world, architects, contractors, interior designers, planners and landscape architects interact with each other every day. In the academic environment, as students learn their specific discipline, they don’t always have the opportunity to work with the other disciplines as they will when they graduate.

The Witters Competition provides this opportunity. Each team consists of a student from each discipline in the college: architecture, building construction, interior design, landscape architecture and urban and regional planning. As each student on the team provides input regarding his or her part of the project, the team learns more about the other professions and the issues affecting their work.

This year’s project focuses on plans to construct a Resource Recovery Park in Alachua County. The park, to be built at the Leveda Brown Environmental Park, would be implemented in response to Florida’s ambitious goal of recycling at least 75 percent of the municipal solid waste by the year 2020. Teams will develop project feasibility and conceptual plans for the park’s economic development.

Established in 1993, the Witters Competition is endowed by Arthur G. and Beverley A. Witters for a collegewide interdisciplinary academic competition to foster better understanding among design, construction and planning students.