Piscataway Plaza

Designing with Thought

Located at the northern tip of University of Maryland, College Park, the leafHouse stands as an accomplishment to UMD’s innovative design. It won second place overall in the Solar Decathlon competition and now sits on the outskirts of the campus.

The main goals of this project was to incorporate the Piscataway and other indigenous tribes into the leafHouse and its surroundings. With the vast amount of history with the land, we wanted to incorporate indigenous knowledge to tie in with the theme of sustainability.

SWOT Analysis

For this project, we wanted to see what the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to the site. Each part of SWOT corresponds to a color.

Strengths

  1. Lots of softscape, property is large to bring UMD students and nearby residents

  2. Existing Buildings to support vision

  3. Trees are in mostly good condition

Weaknesses

  1. Limited parking

  2. Limited pedestrian access from the UMD campus

  3. Area can be hard to walk, especially with those with disabilities

Opportunities

  1. Relocation of reACT house

  2. Potential for connections to both residential and campus

  3. More awareness to the site

Threats

  1. Limited parking

  2. Limited pedestrian access from the UMD campus

  3. Area can be hard to walk, especially with those with disabilities

Creating Concepts