Client: The Larimer Community
Location: Larimer, PA, United States
Completion date: 2015
Artwork budget: $1,000,000
Project Team
Artist
Betsy Damon
The Larimer Consensus Group
Artist
Bob Bingham
Carnegie Mellon University
Other
Carolyn Peeks
The Larimer Green Team
Architect
Christine Mondor
evolveEA
Industry Resource
Matt Graham
Landbased Systems
Industry Resource
John Stephen
eDesign Dynamics
Other
Fred Brown
The Kingsley Association
Other
Betty Lane
The Larimer Consensus Group/The Larimer Green Team
Other
Robert Germany
The Larimer Consensus Group
Overview
The Living Waters of Larimer: A Fresh Infrastructure is an artist led project and collaboration between a community, architects, engineers and local artists. This projects seeks to address the entire Larimer neighborhood, creating demonstration projects and encouraging individual efforts to shape Larimer's redevelopment process.
Goals
Living Waters of Larimer shifts the paradigm of storm water from waste to resource. It creates a plan and demonstration projects to reinvent a community's water infrastructures, integrating rainwater harvesting into urban spaces, cultural life, and local economics. Collaboration and community participation are key to integrating green infrastructure that reflect community interests and aesthetics, and augment community life. With this project the present community takes control of their natural resources for future development.
Process
Many organizations and individuals came together to create Living Waters of Larimer: A Fresh Infrastructure. In 2011, led by the Kingsley Association and evolveEA architecture, the Larimer community created the region's first ecodistrict plan, setting goals, identifying strategies around energy, water, food, transportation, and equity. Artists Betsy Damon and Bob Bingham organized to educate and involve the entire community using art installations, workshops, and on-the-ground outreach. Individuals and artists in the community are encouraged to create projects and business plans that integrate rainwater harvesting, and be part of this neighborhood-wide effort. This project is approached as a reproducible model so that other communities will have a functioning precedent for community-controlled green infrastructure.