Integral Stormwater Design Part 1: Alpharetta High School

The Alpharetta High School (333,000sf, $47.4 million), located in Alpharetta, Georgia, was designed by Perkins+Will. Poole Design provided landscape architectural services. The design for the facility was selected through a juried design competition. The project includes a number of sustainable stormwater strategies that are incorporated into the overall design of the project.

When first approaching Alpharetta High School, you immediately realize that it had to contend with a very challenging site. Located at the foothills of the North Georgia mountains 150ft above the Big Creek Basin, the building was sited to minimize its impact on the site while maintaining one its greatest assets, the view of the surrounding landscape. As with most suburban high schools, it had to accommodate a large number of surface parking spaces for the faculty, staff, and many of its 1,850 students. The parking lot is divided into a series of 60ft parking bays that terrace down the hillside.It utilizes wheel stops and eliminates curbs on the low side of the parking. This arrangement conveys the stormwater into bioretention facilities separating each parking bay which encourages water to infiltrate into the soil. Each one is planted with shrubs and the steep slopes are planted with large shade trees.

Other stormwater facilities include the large bioretention basins between each wing of the high school. The basins are fed by roof water directed to the basin with conventional rain leaders and large concrete runnels. Together they create an attractive stormwater feature. My favorite feature was the stormwater runnels that cascaded along the steps, eventually terminating into a large bioretention basin. You can find more photos of this project on our parent site sitephocus.com.