O’Dell Engineering Project Updates: O’Dell Receives ASLA Award for Beckwith Veterinary Hospital

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O’Dell Engineering is proud to announce that the firm received the Honor Award (Institutional/Civic) for Beckwith Veterinary Hospital at the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) California Sierra Chapter 2016 Design Awards.

The award category of Institutional/Civic recognizes site-specific works of landscape architecture for institutional, commercial, or civic uses. Submissions were evaluated based on factors including the quality of the design, environmental sensitivity and sustainability, and design value to the client, other designers, and the public.

Beckwith Veterinary Hospital is a truly innovative and inspiring project. The approximately 3.6 acre site is located in Stanislaus County.  From the first project meeting, an “Eco-Charette”, the client was dedicated to completing a project that was not only sensitive to the project site, but reflected his belief in environmental stewardship.  One of the main project goals was to obtain LEED Gold certification.

This project was designed to reflect the strong agricultural history of the area and the orchards that surround it. The architecture form is regionally appropriate with an aesthetic suggestive of an agricultural barn and attached silo. The landscape was designed not only to accent and highlight the barn façade, but act as an educational garden for potential tours of the building and landscape.  This building is the first of its kind in a traditionally conservative area, and as such has great potential as an educational tool and showpiece to highlight methods of integrating green technology into projects in the local region. The landscape integrates low water use plants, sand beds, and river cobble commonly found in the region to create a landscape cohesive with the site’s innate characteristics.

First and foremost, however, the landscape design revolved around stormwater quality and water conservation. In a nearly unheard of fashion, this project integrated a variety of technologies to capture ALL on-site water including stormwater, cooling equipment condensate, and wastewater for use within the landscape. The combination of a 300,000 gallon underground cistern, a unique wastewater leach field system, artificial turf in the dog run, dripline systems, strategically placed inert landscape materials, and low water use plants, result in a system that is able to irrigate the entire landscape with no potable water at all. Given its location in the Central Valley of California this is an incredible feat.

O’Dell Engineering is proud to have been a part of such a revolutionary and unique project!

To learn more about the landscape architecture services O’Dell Engineering provides, click here.

To learn more about the project, click here.


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