Penn design students win national competition for ‘climate-resilient’ tennis court proposal

Four students from the Stuart Weitzman School of Design earned national recognition for their design proposal to convert a Houston tennis facility into a climate-resilient community space.

Candidates for a master’s in architecture Ann Teng Chua, Teng Long Lee, Liam Niland, and Kotaro Shiraishi designed “The Rainwoven” for the United States Tennis Association’s Future Courts challenge. Their proposal was selected from 60 submissions by 100 students representing 45 colleges and universities across the country. 

The competition asked students to reconsider the environment surrounding a traditional tennis court.

The competition encouraged participants to address factors such as sustainability, accessibility, infrastructure, landscaping, and community use without changing the court’s established dimensions or playing surface. Penn’s entry was one of three finalists.

In a joint statement, Chua, Lee, Niland, and Kotaro wrote that the group began the project by considering weather conditions familiar to outdoor athletes — like high humidity, intense heat, and sudden rainstorms — that could leave hard courts unusable for hours.

“We’ve all been there — the incessant waiting for the rain to stop, the exasperation of soaked tennis balls and ruined games, the exhausting scrambling to squeegee puddles off the court,” the team wrote.

Rather than Houston’s climate as a limitation, the students wanted to make it a central component of their design. The proposal pairs permeable playing surfaces with an integrated system that manages stormwater to improve court conditions.

According to the team, rainwater would be collected and filtered on site before being reused in cooling misters and landscape irrigation. Operable canopies would respond to changing weather conditions, providing shade during periods of extreme heat and shelter during rain while directing water into collection systems. The facilities would also have solar canopies that could generate energy and offset some of the facility’s demands.

The design additionally incorporates rain chains, runoff funnels, phase-change cooling materials, and pathways to connect the courts to the surrounding park and landscape. 

“Instead of treating these weather challenges as obstacles, we used them as our primary design drivers to reimagine the court as a climate-resilient community hub,” the group explained.

When they began their proposal, the students relied on a combination of research and personal experience. After outlining their central goals, they divided the project according to each member’s strengths.

Collaborating across different locations while working full-time made coordination one of the project’s principal challenges, according to the team. The four students met virtually about twice each week to discuss ideas and review the proposal’s development.

“Staying fully in sync with each other was our biggest obstacle,” the team wrote. “We were all working full-time, scattered across different parts of the world.”

The students also added that their different cultural backgrounds and perspectives required them to critically examine their ideas and develop a shared design language. 

“Being able to connect with various industry professionals gave us invaluable insight to how conceptual design could transform into a real project,” they wrote.

Christian Gabriel, who serves as the managing director of National Infrastructure Strategy at the USTA, wrote in a press release that the competition sought to give emerging designers an opportunity to challenge conventions surrounding tennis facilities.

“We wanted to see what could happen when emerging designers were given the freedom to question familiar assumptions and approach the challenge from a completely different perspective,” Gabriel wrote.

The students also added that the experience gave them an opportunity to collaborate outside of their usual studios and learn from their peers.

“It was amazing to be able to meet the other finalists and to find out more about their projects,” they wrote. “It broadened our perspective on spatial design and reinforced the value of collaboration in architecture.”

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