Environmental Design Commons^™

Cherokee Architectural Traditions: A Southeastern Environmental Design Precedent, Josie J. Tunnell

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Impact_ An Exploration Of Urban Ecosystems, Sophia Teresa Spock

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Terra Incognita: Post-Traumatic Infrastructural Opportunism, Zachary Corre Orig

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

In anticipation of the impending results of a world affected by climate change, architecture is now more than ever positioned to leverage its unique influence, communication, and power to fight problems that the world cannot see. Every day we turn a lamp on, start a car, or make a pot of coffee, we are engaging into a complex system of interacting with the world’s natural resources: fossil fuels. The United Nations, as of 2019, predicts we have but twelve years at most until climate change is irreversible. As the world runs out of time to cool down, global traumatic …

Fluid Urbanism: Connecting The Tennessee River Mega-Region, John D. Koelsch

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Infratecture: Infrastructure As Architecture, David Aaron Wright

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

In today’s society, we are given a systematic way to understand, think, and ultimately, exist in the world. These systems can be seen in christianity, eighteen- wheeler trucks, veganism, or plane travel. All distinctively different, yet similar in that each one defines the way you project yourself. In the layered nature of infrastructure, there are two stages where this primarily plays out: 1 Logistics - Whats it takes to get the latest, greatest iPhone to the market/the money it will take, the labor, the energy. 2 Culture - The reverberation of getting the latest, greatest iPhone to market. How it …

In Shadow Of Disaster, Meredith Rene Graves

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

People are drawn to places of safety, familiarity and stability – places they call home. The built environment then becomes a visible measurement of the security of a community: if structures are intact, so are the people housed within them. Yet each year with increasing intensity and frequency, natural disasters are wrecking buildings and communities all over the globe. The unstoppable force of a natural disaster remains undetectable and unpredictable, even with scientific experts employing the most technologically—advanced monitoring systems.

Due to its diverse landscapes and amount of coastal territory, the United States consistently suffers from natural disasters. According to …

Transecting The Heart: An Atrium Investigation, Aubrey Sofia Bader, Sandra Ghabrial

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

An oxbow in a river creates a peninsula with a unique environment, distant from the surrounding land. Similarly, the oxbow-shaped Federal Center South Building 1202 contains a peninsula, an enclosed atrium, with an environment unlike the flowing current of offices that surround it. The cool modern offices are contrasted with the warmth of the central timber structure. The exposed timber beams and columns consist of wood reclaimed from a warehouse that previously stood on the site. In conversation with the modern oxbow of offices, the timber is reinforced by steel beams, giving it new life.

During our initial research phase, …

Integral Perspectives, Henry Brian Cheek

Masters Theses

Integral Perspectives is a method to architectural design that encompasses four different approaches. The four approaches, or perspectives, I chose to focus on include: Cultural, Experiential, Performance, and Systems. Designing with each of these perspectives in mind, I intend to create a more holistic and integral design solution. My thesis explores this methodology using the affordable housing crisis in Nashville, TN.

The Artifacts Of Preserving: Housing Echoes Of Silence, Jennifer Nicklas

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Mutualism: Experience Of Instantaneous, Generational, And Geological Time On Heimaey Island, Jessica Ryann Porter

Masters Theses

Iceland’s Heimaey Island’s population is approximately 4400 people (Vestmannaeyjar). The island’s main industries are fishing and tourism, which depend on the harbor on the island’s northeast side (Iceland: Westman Islands). Keeping the harbor accessible is essential to these industries. Because the harbor was almost lost during the 1973 volcanic eruption, proactive measures must be taken to protect the harbor from future eruptions.

For the purpose of this thesis, an architecture has been designed that creates a mutualistic relationship between humanity, architecture, lichens, and lava flows that is experienced over three scales of time by humanity. The concepts of instantaneous time, …

Speculative Future Metabolic Architecture, Haley Erin Moore

Masters Theses

Speculating the implications of a metabolic architecture provides a platform for thinking about a new way of future building. Disaster scenarios such as floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, nuclear fallouts, and others are unavoidable events. Instead of building compressively, meaning building to defend against scenarios such as disasters, the future should include building in the way a natural system behaves, in flux, with material dependencies, and as an output produced from the exchange of materials, reactions, or responses that occur in a metabolism. Architecture must be thought of as an output of a metabolism, an altered input, where this output is unknown …

Timetalk, Kenna Cajka

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Measuring Rapid Stillness, Alexis Porten

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Network-Based Development In Chattanooga, Tennessee: Processes And Potentials, Kathryn Ansley Taylor

Masters Theses

Chattanooga is a city of networks. The goal of this project is to provide examples of how developers, by tapping into Chattanooga’s most vital networks, can create buildings that speak to the city’s unique character, build interest in the city, and foster a stronger future for Chattanooga.

Chattanooga has four networks that serve as its backbone. They are the Cultural Network, the Blue Green Network, the Fiber Optic Network and the Dwelling Network. These networks are linkages between people and places, bound by common hopes and affinities. They are platforms for social connection, economic growth and physical change.

Three developments …

Forgotten Infrastructure: The Future Of The Industrial Mundane, Whitney Ann Manahan

Masters Theses

The typical cycle of industrial use, disuse, and abandonment is no longer acceptable or feasible. This thesis investigates phased remediation and conversion of petrochemical structures and their respective sites with the intention of increasing both the socioeconomic vitality and environmental quality of the area.

The oil silo is an intriguing object and industrial artifact. Being close to one of these massive structures is captivating and there is something truly exciting and thought provoking about inhabiting a space that was clearly not meant for humans. These are qualities that provide opportunities to connect people with a site and create a place …

Constructing Terroir: Architectural Mitigation In Mono-Economies At Risk To Climate Change, Geneva Margaret Hill

Masters Theses

Climate change will have enormous implications for the future of architecture and design at all scales. Architectural discourse has recently focused mainly on preparing major cities to become the future sustainable centers of living for the world. Little has been discussed, however, about the future of smaller communities on the periphery and the implications of their loss to the diverse American cultural landscape.

Napa Valley contains many communities threatened by a changing climate. Napa Valley plays a major role in America’s culture as the heart of American winemaking. The success in Napa Valley wine is deeply rooted to the soil. …

Placial Identity, Garrett Keyes Nelli

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Red Bird Water Kiosk Pavilion _ Clean Water Clean Life, Garrett Keyes Nelli

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Architecture has the power to strengthen community bonds, support a healthy life style and enrich individual lives. The Red Bird Water Kiosk seeks to achieve all three of these on the site of the Red Bird Mission campus, located deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Clay County, Kentucky. This is an area where most live below the poverty line, and about 64 percent of water sources are contaminated. As a result, lack of clean water has forced many locals to turn to unhealthy living standards. Because of these conditions, the county ranks as one of the poorest in the nation, …

Leap Collaborative: A Demonstration Of Sustainable Practices, Sierra Rose Jensen, David Keith Berry

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Located on in the heart of downtown Knoxville along West Church Avenue, the LEAP Collaborative is imagined as a collection of landscape architects, engineers, architects, and planners who contract projects with an emphasis on sustainable design. Therefore, for the design of their headquarters, we wanted to express that commitment to sustainable design and display some of those practices clearly to the pedestrian and passer-by. One of the main goals was the clarity of programmatic pieces. The retail comes out to the street edge to invite shoppers. The laboratory, highly visible, pushes forward towards the street edge but is less accessible …

Carbon-Neutral Design Guidelines For Medium Density Urban Areas In Warm-Humid And Cool-Dry Climates, Jennifer Delane Stewart

Masters Theses

This thesis combines Architecture 2030’s carbon-neutral performance targets with the SmartCode transect-based development principles, to generate guidelines for design of medium-density carbon-neutral districts. The topic examines these guidelines in medium density planned and built sites (transect types T4, General Urban Zone, and T5, Urban Center Zone) in representative cities within a cool-dry climate (IECC climate zone 5B, Denver) and a warm-humid climate (IECC climate zone 3A, Atlanta). The thesis assumes that a carbon-neutral district is more effective and potentially easier to achieve than designing independent carbon-neutral urban buildings. Within an urban context, it is now possible to connect buildings to …

Agri[Culture]: An Alternate Paradigm For The American Landscape, Melissa Erin Morris

Masters Theses

Throughout the Appalachian region, one can experience the vast disappearance of the American landscape as we know it. Whether driving through the rugged coal mining towns of Virginia, or the suburban sprawl taking over the rural farmland of Tennessee, it becomes clear that this is a spreading epidemic. Without an appropriate balance of urban, suburban, and rural areas, we begin to loose the landscape which has always been so closely linked to this country’s cultural and physical identity.

This thesis focuses on the agrarian Appalachian culture with a proposal for a project rooted heavily in cultural identity. With programs based …

Deep Surface: Engaging The Terra Viscus, Amanda Nicole Gann

Masters Theses

Two hundred and forty-six acres along the eastern edge of downtown Memphis are labeled as “Shaded Zone X” on FEMA flood insurance maps. This is an area “protected by the levees” but subject to flood during large storm events. Unprepared for the potential flood, the people within this area feel safe behind the static levee wall. If storms worsen as predicted and settlement continues to sprawl increasing impervious surfaces of the Mississippi River Basin, the area within Shaded Zone X and the people who occupy it will be in danger.

Historically, storm water In Zone X drained into the Gayoso …

Block 271, Reviving An Industrial Artifact, Jared Thomas Pohl

Masters Theses

Vacant industrial sites are scattered throughout our cities all across the country. These sites, these remnants of industry, are occupied by a very interesting category of buildings. They are artifacts from an industrial era that served very unique and specific functions. These service buildings suffered programmatic failure and have lost their vitality. They have entered a form of hibernation, waiting for the post-industrial epoch to wake them up.

The building stock under investigation makes up a large portion of the city’s structures. Identifiable by their heroic scale, clean articulated lines and tendency to be vacant, these service buildings raise arguments …

Change By Design: A Study In The Potential For Architecture And Design To Encourage Healthy, Conscious Behaviors And Enduring Sustainable Change, Kathleen Michelle Lewis

Masters Theses

Sustainability is more than a technologically based, financially motivated option for living. Instead, it is an invigorating opportunity for creating healthier environments on a mental, physical, and deeply personal scale. The intent of the following study is to inspire long-term sustainable solutions. The foundation for this course of inquiry will be an exploration, analysis, and synthesis into the potential for architecture to engender quality experiences by satisfying basic human needs, instilling environmentally responsible values, and promoting sustainable behavior.

Wind Cave Bison Station, Nathaniel R. Cimala

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Prioritizing Stormwater Management: Comparing Integrated Best Management Practices In Urban And Suburban Neighborhoods, Danielle Kathleen Norman

Masters Theses

This thesis demonstrates a comparison of two design proposals that integrate Best Management Practices to address stormwater runoff volumes in urban and suburban neighborhoods. The thesis investigation includes the selection and comparison of two diverse neighborhoods to inform design decisions. It then assesses the environmental, social and economic implications of the design proposal in each neighborhood.

The site selection process is a method that overlays specific criterion such as residential land use, topographic features, and median household income (3) nested scales; the watershed scale, the sub-watershed scale, and the neighborhood scale. For the purposes of this paper, nested scales are …

Working With Paul Rudolph To Make Rudolph Work: Reclaiming, Conserving, And Adapting Sarasota High School (1958), Katherine Marie Armstrong

Masters Theses

Sarasota High School, designed by Paul Rudolph in 1958, physically embodies the central ideas of Regional Modernism that developed in Sarasota, Florida in the 1940s and 50s. Covered breezeways, monumental sunshades, deep overhangs, and sliding glass doors promote natural ventilation and sun shading as ways to deal with Florida’s hot climate. As an example of progressive architecture of the time, it is a seminal work of Rudolph’s and significant to Sarasota’s architectural legacy of climatically responsive, modernist buildings that captured international attention.

Sixty years later, Sarasota High School is now unoccupied and in a state of disrepair. The school board …

Surface Parking Lots: Killers Of Vibrancy And Local Culture In Downtowns, Aubrie Dianne Damron

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to propose a solution to a world wide condition, most noticeable in the United States, that is the erosional pattern caused by the downtown surface parking lot. Vibrancy and local culture are crucial factors to the existence of a successful downtown area, but excessive surface parking lots are inhibiting the growth of downtown metropolitan areas. They create gaps devoid of growth. These gaps in the fabric of downtown are killing downtown vitality and identity. The current parking lot density in many downtowns is a cause for concern if there is to be continual economic …

Revitalizing A 19th Century Industrial Complex Into A 21st Century Research And Learning Technology Center, James Lawrence Wines

Masters Theses

The revitalization and repurposing of the Domino’s Sugar Plant will foster a vibrant and engaged community for the neighborhood in a distinct way differing from the recent history of growth. Williamsburg is located in a north Brooklyn, New York, community that has been struggling for its identity since the 1970’s. The reprogramming of this abandoned industrial site will include the addition of a new technological research center that will contribute to economic growth and stability for the neighborhood. The new jobs will help bring more people into the neighborhood who will be committed to both live and work there. At …

Interactions Between The Urban Environment And “The Homelessness”: Observations And Responses, Jeffrey Charles Stahl

Masters Theses

Homelessness and people living on the streets is a phenomenon that is facing every major urban center in the United States. These people are a commonality in the urban landscape and are often seen a problem to be fi xed. Due to the interactions between the urban environment and persons experiencing homelessness, there needs to be a paradigm shift in how policy is written and how we design an intervention for these forgotten people. The goal of this thesis is to gain a clearer understanding to what it is like to survive on the streets: how dose someone fi nd …