FLASLA Member Glenn Acomb Featured In Stormwater Magazine
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
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Posted by: Jon Shiver
http://www.stormh2o.com/SW/Articles/Reader_Profile_Glenn_Acomb_24838.aspx
To accomplish their tasks effectively, stormwater managers often look
to institutions of higher learning to help sort out options and keep
them abreast of new developments. Glenn Acomb, FASLA, is happy to
oblige. He’s a senior lecturer in green infrastructure design and
construction at the University of Florida’s (UF’s) Department of
Landscape Architecture, teaching skills he honed for 25 years as a
landscape architect and planner. His research focuses on green roof
design and performance and on plant communities—especially in hot-humid
climates—as well as site design for sustainable landscape and
hydrologic systems. Acomb’s stormwater interest is rooted in low impact
development (LID) practices, particularly designs reflecting historic
hydrologic conditions and incorporating natural drainage systems and
devices. He’s researched the effects of high-speed wind uplift
(hurricane-level winds) on green roof assemblies, both built-in-place
and modular tray forms. Along with a colleague in UF’s Department of
Civil and Coastal Engineering, Acomb has tested a variety of plants in
growth media depths of 4, 6, and 8 inches at varying wind speeds for
their performance on flat, parapet roofs, monitoring aggregate
displacement, tolerance limits, root strength, and resilience. He’s
also researched cost comparisons of conventional versus sustainable LID
design techniques using both capital cost and maintenance cost
comparisons on a single-family, quarter-acre lot community in
Gainesville, FL, developed as a joint venture with UF’s Program for
Resource Efficient Communities, a cross-discipline research consortium
he cofounded. His findings: LID sustainable design practices saved 10%
of site development costs and 50% of annual maintenance costs.
What He Does Day to Day
Acomb is devoted to teaching, research, and practice. He can be found
working with students in a classroom emphasizing design and site
planning using green infrastructure, evaluating a site for a bioswale,
or working on the UF green roof he codesigned in 2007 as a laboratory
and educational tool to demonstrate water conservation, technology,
plant material selection, and maintenance.
What Led Him Into This Field
Acomb holds a BLA from Louisiana State University and an MLA from
Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He was drawn to
landscape architecture as a creative and artful profession
incorporating human uses, technology, and architecture within a site’s
natural systems.
"Designing for a site’s hydrologic and ecologic health is especially
important in my work,” he says. "Another facet of the field is its
multi-disciplinary nature and the ability to work together for the
common good. It is difficult for one profession to produce a design
that is truly successful in function, natural systems, and human use
and sustainability. The best solutions are designs that include
engineers, landscape architects, hydrologists, architects, geotechnical
professionals, and environmental scientists collaborating together.”
What He Likes Best About His Work
"My greatest joy is seeing my students succeed and acknowledge how they
have learned and grown since my class instruction,” says Acomb.
Case in point: UF won first place for a large institution in the EPA
Campus RainWorks Challenge, a national competition to design green
infrastructure improvements for campuses. The UF design incorporated a
central pedestrian corridor on a campus lawn with an integrated system
of green infrastructure practices to improve infiltration and stabilize
ecosystem conditions in Lake Alice by using naturalistic rain gardens
and bioswales, two architectural collection pools, a green wall, a
green roof, and a garden. "The excitement and pride of the team’s
accomplishment of winning a national championship is an incredible
feeling,” notes Acomb. "Our team of eight landscape architecture and
four engineering students made me proud of what the future holds for
our professions.”
His Biggest Challenge
Keeping up with technological advancements and successfully creating a
classroom experience illustrating how science must be integrated into
living, natural systems that humans will appreciate are Acomb’s biggest
challenges.
"As research advances what we do, the changes and systems connections
grow exponentially into a variety of areas,” says Acomb. "When new
technology is applied to stormwater management, it affects the
hydrologic system, changes the natural systems, affects human use or
acceptance, changes real estate development, and alters operation and
maintenance procedures and budgets. These impacts must be explored,
researched, and understood within its life cycle if we are to be
successful and sustainable.”
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