WaterShed is the result of collaborative efforts involving over 200 students from diverse disciplines across the University of Maryland campus including architecture, engineering, environmental science and technology, plant sciences, landscape architecture, and other disciplines. This multi-disciplinary program provides students with an understanding of the process by which architects, engineers, and other allied professionals engage one another to make design a constructed reality.
The core of the project is not a single student or faculty leader, but rather a set of principles shared by the team about what it means to design a clean‐energy, clean‐water building. Around these core principles, leaders from all invested disciplines – architecture, engineering, and plant science students – head up teams of students working on multiple fronts. The iterative process of design lets students to continually gain more confidence in their abilities to make an initial concept design into a constructed, fully functioning solar-powered home.