SEED – Dr. Yiwei Huang's Lab – Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture
SEED – Dr. Yiwei Huang's Lab Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture

Welcome to Sustainability Education and Engaged Design (SEED) Lab

In Huang’s lab, our focus lies in exploring the daily lives of individuals (especially children, senior, and ethnic minorities) and their interactions with the outdoor environment in urban settings. Our objective is to comprehend the diverse experiences across various demographics. We explain the significance of ecosystem services, equitable and inclusive greening, and sustainable site design to those who may lack the requisite knowledge. Moreover, we strive to enable underrepresented groups to express their enthusiasm to make positive transformations in cities, and we use experiments to test novel concepts and foster empowerment and progress. 

 

Recent Projects 

Children’s Book and Learning Games on Indiana Native Plants & Habitats

“Children’s Book and Learning Games on Native Plants” are the efforts of us landscape architecture students passing down to younger audiences two crucial things we have learned during our time as university students: plant native, and right plant, right place! By passing down this knowledge earlier in children’s education, the native ecosystems and habitats of our local environments could drastically change for the better and promote healthier habitats.

https://www.asla.org/2023studentawards/8931.html

The free digital version of the book can be downloaded here: https://mdc.itap.purdue.edu/item.asp?Item_Number=HG-268-W

Journal article discussing the motivation, process, and result: Bloom and Grow: Creating an Illustrated Book and Learning Games on Native Plants for Children.

Exploring the Potential for Greener Schoolyards in Indianapolis 

 

Edible schoolyards can improve children’s experiential learning, promote greater environmental responsibility, provide access to fresh foods, and foster healthier dietary practices. Despite these benefits, the adoption of green and edible schoolyards in Indiana is still quite limited. This project seeks to examine the existing tree canopy and garden spaces within school properties to explore the relationship between these green areas and demographic variables such as race, income, and population density. The goal is to uncover any disparities in the creation of school environments. This project is Wanting Zhang’s thesis project.
Project Narrative and Image credit: Wanting Zhang. Image Refinement: Serine Kao 
 

A Battle Against Nutrient Pollution – Landscape Interventions along the White River 

Nutrient pollution is a pressing problem in the surface waters of the United States. Annually, agricultural runoff rich in nutrients from the Midwest plays a major role in exacerbating the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. This project focuses on strategic locations along the White River in Indiana, specifically targeting nutrient pollution in the upper west fork. It aims to develop a suite of landscape interventions toolkits (16 typologies) suitable for agricultural, suburban, and urban settings. By prioritizing ecological restoration, improving human interactions with the environment, and boosting community involvement, this initiative seeks to create a planning framework for future low-impact remediation efforts along the upper West Fork White River. This project is Yahan You’s senior capstone project. 

Project Designer and Image credits: Yahan You.
 

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