“Waste not Want not”

The Mar vista Gardens is a low-income housing project that suffers from excessive water-intensive design. Large grass lawns and a baseball field are contributing factors.

The proposal for this site is the sole reliance on the capturing and filtering of rainfall and runoff for the sustenance of the community fields and gardens, as well as the integration of artificial wetland for the processing and re-circulation of black water into gray water.

Moving accountability from a centralized system to the individual, the proposed system will foster water conservation awareness and inspire activism amongst residents. Ideally, Mar Vista Gardens will become an inspiring example of responsible water usage for other low-income communities.

The Mar Vista Hydro-cycle will benefit wildlife, create jobs and generate a new identity for the community as an ecologically-conscious entity committed to responsible water usage.

Through a complete redesign of landscape and irrigation systems, water usage will be reduced by 80%, with the remaining 20% supplied solely by runoff. The creation of this self-sustaining system means a 100% reduction of municipal water usage.

The integration of an artificial wetland employs a natural filtering system to capture black water from laundry and toilets and convert it to gray water for future use in these applications, which account for 49% of indoor water usage.