Digital Collection of Work @elijah_hale_design.zip (Instragram_ Skills
Software: Rhino RhinoCAM Grasshopper
Revit
Adobe Creative Suite Blender Houdini
ArcGIS Pro
Analog:
Drawing: Sketching and Drafting Model Fabrication
Education
University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Bachelor of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture Candidate 2019-Present, Dean’s List
Aalto University
Finland Summer Institute of Architecture Summer 2022
Relevant Experience
Architectural Intern, HKS Architects; Atlanta, GA Summer 2024
Architectural Intern, ESa (Earl Swenson Architects); Nashville, TN Summer 2023
Graduate Research Assistant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Andrew Madl Fall 2024
Graduate Research Assistant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Andrew Madl Spring 2025 Current
Research Assistant, FRAF Grant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design StudioMARS, Mark Stanley Spring 2023
Research Assistant, FRAF Grant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design StudioMARS, Mark Stanley Summer 2023
Research Assistant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design StudioMARS, Mark Stanley Spring 2024
Teaching Assistant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design IARC 200 Human Environement Releations, Dr. Jinoh Park Spring 2021
Teaching Assistant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Arch 211 History and Theory of Architecture 1, Dr. Gregor Kalas Fall 2022
Teaching Assistant, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Arch 365 Performative Design 1: Passive Systems, Professor Mark Dekay Spring 2023
Course Development, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Dsgn 130 Design Thinking, Professor David Matthews Winter 2022
Digital Print Center, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Fall 2022
AIA Henry Adams Medal, The University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Spring 2024
ARCC King Medal, The University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Spring 2024
Aubrey Knott Award for Design Exploration, The University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Spring 2024
Volunteer of Distiction, The University of Tennessee Office of the Provost Nominated by College Spring 2024
Volunteer of Distiction, The University of Tennessee Office of the Provost Highest Grade-Point Average Spring 2024
EURECA Award of Excellence, University of Tennessee Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships
Project: The Biotic Machine with Rose Crawford, Sarina Hermanto, and Keith Carter May 2022
Dean’s List, University of Tennessee 2019-Present
Exhibitions and Displayed Work
Research work displayed in UTK CoAD Downtown Exhibit
Project: Farm & to & Market; Prof. Mark Stanley Fall 2023
Discovery Day Presenter, University of Tennessee Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships
Project: Farm & to & Market; Prof. Mark Stanley
EURECA Presenter, University of Tennessee Office of Undergraduate Research and Fellowships
Project: The Biotic Machine with Rose Crawford, Sarina Hermanto, and Keith Carter May 2022
Architectural Modeland Drawings to be displayed in Aalvar Aalto Foundation’s Villa Kokkonen Museem
Model and Drawings of Villa Kokkonen worked on collaboratively with FSAI Summer 2022, to be displayed following renovations
Uber Review Selection, University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design Fall 2020, Project: Lighthouse, Studio Professor: Scott Wall Spring 2021, Project: The Biotic Machine with Rose Crawford, Sarina Hermanto, and Keith Carter; Studio Professor: Brian Ambroziak
Digitally Featured Work
Rehome with Rose Crawford, Studio Professor: Hansjoerg Goeritz, Featured on @models_architecture (Instagram and Facebook), @mini architect (Instagram), and @utk_arch (Instagram)
The Biotic Machine with Rose Crawford, Sarina Hermanto,and Keith Carter; Professor: Brian Ambroziak, Featured on @utk_arch (Instagram)
Other Involvements
Soloist and Principle Saxophonist, University of Tennessee School of Music Concert Band: Alto and Baritone Saxophone Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020
Saxophonist, University of Tennessee School of Music Symphonic Band: Alto Saxophone
Saxophonist, University of Tennessee School of Music Pride of the Southland Marching Band: Alto Saxophone Fall 2019, Fall 2020
Eat What You Sow!
Location: Allensworth, CA
Studio: 4th Year Studio, Kevin Stevens
Contributor: Rose Crawford
Program: Agriculture Education Center
Seeded Futures
Location: Memphis, TN
Studio: 2nd Year MLA; Andrew Madl
Contributor: James (Trey) Svoboda
Program: Cloud Seeding
We’ll Revel and Sup
Location: Clearfork Valley, TN
Studio: 2nd Year MLA; Scottie McDaniel Program: Archive
Sing, Sow, Steward
Location: Dispersed Sites Across Appalachia
Studio: 5th Year Studio; Chad Manley and Faye Nixon
Program: Gentle Land Cultivation through Novel Religious Practice
Harmonic Motion
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Studio: 3rd Year Undergraduate, Marleen Davis
Program: Drone Transit Center
Re-home
Location: 7 Dispersed Sites Across the US
Studio: 3rd Year Studio, Hansjörg Göritz
Contributor: Rose Crawford
Program: Studioli ad Loca
Loinen
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Studio: 4th Year Summer, Mark Stanley and Micah Rutenburg
Contributor: Isabel Evans
Program: Studioli ad Loca
Biotic Machine
Location: San Francisco
Studio: 2nd Year Studio, Brian Ambroziak
Contributors: Rose Crawford, Sarina Hermanto, and Keith Carter Program: WHO Headquarters
Farm & To & Market
Faculty Mentor: Mark Stanley
Contributor: Rose Crawford, Parker Greene, Ella Larkin, Alice Irizarry, Michael Jenks, and Grace Hooper
Program: Rethinking Urban Periphery Agriculture
TN MADE
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Design Leader: Mark Stanley
Contributors: Rose Crawford and Shakori Carpenter
Program: Design Charrette for the University of Tennessee Advanced Materials and Design Research Enterprise
Corporate Square Redevelopment
Location: Brookhaven, GA
Studio: Commercial Mixed Use; Summer 2024
Contributors: HKS Commercial Mixed Use and HKS Cities and Communities Program: Mixed Use Development
University Campus :: Planting Design
Location: Knoxville, TN
Class: LAR 535; Mike Ross
Program: University Campus Redesign
Williams Creek Watershed
Location: Knoxville, TN
Class: LAR 534; Chad Manley
Eat What You Sow!
Location: Allensworth, CA
Studio: 4th Year Studio, Kevin Stevens
Contributor: Rose Crawford
Program: Agriculture Education Center
Eat What You Sow is an architectural, community based enrichment initiative to increase access to a local knowledge base of food, materials, and the environment.
Eat What You Sow explores the creation of space for community enrichment and widens the scope of the community to include nonhuman living beings. The project’s intent is to extend the reach of Allensworth through the empowerment of the local community and provide opportunities within the region. Through the design of the site, the building, and the community activities hosted on site, we hope to engage productively with the local ecology, providing a place of education and food production that is reverent to local ecologies and native species. This project will focus on rainwater collection, utilization and reestablishment of the
water table. Harnessing natural aspects of the climate and environment, the building will work to exist within means. Using passive systems, the building has the potential to minimize reliance on artificial lighting, temperature, and air mediation. Eat What You Sow is a place of education and resources for both the immediate and regional context by establishing a local economy of place based on material sourcing, construction, and repair, creating a long term relationship between the building and the community. Eat What You Sow attempts to address future risks and vulnerabilities caused by economic, environmental, and social change by appealing to the hopes and needs of the Allensworth community.
Defining
Agenda
When looking at what currently exists in Allensworth, we see objects scattering the landscape that are both short lived and imported. These allow for a relatively cheap and rapid inhabitation of the site, which is a critical in these especially disadvantaged communities, but in the long term their lifespans are relatively short and create a reliance on outside systems.
The concept I was interested in exploring is Rebuilding the Local. So, I am curious how local systems of building, agriculture, and community might foster systems of knowledge, practice, and an optimism for the future. By creating a knowledge of place based agriculture and building systems, I hope to embed ideas of long term well being and resilience.
Recipes for Community Development
Conceptually, this project explores the creation of space for community enrichment and widens the scope of community to include nonhuman living beings (such as plants and animals). This project will engage the senses and connect people to place by embracing the uniqueness of the site condition, by reintroducing the native flora and fauna, and by restoring the habitat making the site a place for not only humans but also plants and animals. Through community integration and adoption of a local aesthetic and place-ness, the project will be a design Allensworth will fight to preserve. Some design strategies that can provide multiple benefits across the triple bottom line are the utilization of natural strategies of the community, landscape, sun, climate, and soil. For instance, this involves community programming, the introduction of bioswales, the utilization of native plantings and species, and designing for optimal daylighting.
The project’s intent is to extend the reach of Allensworth in
empowering the local community and providing opportunities to the region. It contributes to creating a more accessible and human-scaled community by filling the lack of density of necessary programs in Allensworth. This project must be conscious in removing barriers and providing accessibility for vulnerable communities. For instance, there must be levels in the design which accommodate for a variety of age groups and mobility abilities. A primary motivation of the project is finding ways in which the architecture can engage and enrich the community. Therefore, we anticipate a variety of programmatic and spatial elements which can encourage human interaction. During times of need or emergency, the project works to serve as a hub of resources for the community. As the area has a delicate and failing infrastructure of resources such as power and water, creating systems of food storage, water gathering and filtration, and site based renewable energy provide opportunities to support the broader community when those resources aren’t available through typical methods.
The site comes with a host of ecological issues caused by industrial agriculture. Therefore, through the integration of natural strategies, we plan on restoring the natural qualities of the soil which in turn will positively influence the ecological health of the site. Additionally, utilizing historically native plants from the wetland will aid in restoring local habitats and animal populations. Through the design of the site as well as the building as well as through the community activities hosted on site, we hope to engage productively with the local ecology, providing a place of education and food production that is reverent to local ecologies and native species. These activities will allow the community to become more engaged with the site’s ecology through the educational systems embedded in the project’s program. Through the utilization of native groundcover, which reduces erosion and water runoff, we can reduce the amount of water used for irrigation while increasing the positive ecological impact. The organic farm on site will also provide seasonally and culturally appropriate
food to the community. Through the implementation of native vegetation and enriching of native ecosystems, the project will support restoration of the local habitat.
Through the utilization of the natural abundance of our site and climate, the building can exist well within means. For instance, throughout the year the building’s climate is well within the comfort zone for temperature and humidity. Therefore the building can rely on natural processes of heating and cooling, bypassing the need for mechanical equipment and still ensure inhabitant comfort. Additionally, the utilization of native and productive species for landscaping allows there to be a decrease of cost in land management and provides opportunities for income generation from produce. The design balances first cost and long term value by investing in practices which will be sustainable for the life of the building while also considering the original cost input.
Seeded Futures
Location: Memphis, TN
Studio: 2nd Year MLA; Andrew Madl
Contributor: James Svoboda
Program: Cloud Seeding
Seeded Futures speculates on Memphis as a testing ground for speculative drone infrastructure that blurs the boundary between machine and citizen. By imagining the drone as a critical piece of Memphis’s cultural future, the project aims to push on political tension points, mundane daily processes, and kitschy cultural phenomena. Using cloud-seeding drone infrastructure as a launch point for this imagined future, drones begin to inhabit all spheres of life within Memphis, hacking existing systems to create a subversive urban ecosystem. Like the pervasive infiltration of AI into all facets of our lives like the Wendy’s drive-thru, Snapchat Chatbot, and AI-powered toasters, the project speculates on how the future of drone infrastructure might be influenced by capitalist processes of commodified culture and creating a subversive speculative future with the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid
as precedent. This might include the extrusion of Beale Street neon into the sky through drone-powered projections onto seeded fog, the creation of purchased personalized micro weather, surveillance on demand, urban wildlife monitoring and maintenance, drone-led history tours, emergency services, and the alteration of weather patterns at large. We imagine these as anthropomorphized citizens, Memphians, of the city, engaging intimately with citizens while working in the background as a larger responsive infrastructure. It imagines a world where the digital becomes physical and the lines between entertainment, governance, and control are blurred. It raises questions about autonomy, exploitation, and the cultural ramifications of surrendering our skies to an increasingly mechanized future. The boundaries of ownership, citizenship, and weather blur, as drones facilitate
both hyper-personalized services and larger atmospheric and infrastructural influence, redefining who controls the atmosphere and who benefits from it. In this imagined Memphis, the drone is not merely a tool but an agent of influence—shaping public discourse, mediating social interactions, and commodifying some of the most elemental aspects of life.
What is cloud seeding? Cloud seeding is a weather modification technique that involves dispersing substances like silver iodide or salt particles into the atmosphere to stimulate cloud condensation and enhance precipitation. It is typically used to increase rainfall in drought-affected areas, reduce hail damage, or dissipate fog. We have an appendix of research at the end of the presentation explaining these processes if you need further clarification.
At the scale of the region, the project deploys various cloud seedling technologies across the Memphis Region including Automated High Output Ground Seeding (AHOGS and
Wing Mounted “Burn-In-Place” (BIP) Flares. These systems and their associated infrastructures were then expanded based on use adjacencies, seasonal usage patterns, and the interplay of public and private interests. These infrastructures are then placed in the landscape based on usage typology and landscape characteristics. In this drawing, we distinguish between four infrastructure typologies *GESTURE TOWARDS LOCATIONS* Crowley’s Ridge ground-based stations (shown in blue), private residential drone stations (shown in dark blue), agricultural auxiliary stations (shown in pink), and central hubs in downtown Memphis (shown in red).
Looking closer at how these are deployed, the plan for downtown Memphis includes the purchase of two properties near the Mississippi River to be turned into central infrastructural hubs: a long linear site along the river and a condemned tower a few blocks away. A key part of the project is imagining how drone-based cloud seeding infrastructure might contribute to the lived experience
of Memphis more broadly whether that be through personalized purchased microweather, surveying cropland beyond, Interactive skywriting, Smart Traffic Flow, Urban Wildlife Monitoring, or surveillance on demand, all of which play out via a network of public and private interests.
Zooming further into these systems and their designed considerations, the Riverfront Front Park is a privately funded public park. Seed Core, AgI Co-op, Beale Tech, and Seeding Operations emerge in the pursuit of a newfound market in the skies. Each maintains headquarters and joint drone infrastructure at the park. Eventually, though these entities are governed by Memphis Atmospherics Union (MAU). This site represents the intersection of the lineage of Memphis Showboats, novel drone infrastructures, and playful urban space in a condensed and layered park. Some of the designed considerations include Elevation Nest drone towers for quick recharging, waters edge drone
towers that are used as refill stations for various seeding technologies that serve as ticketing stations for a renewed Memphis showboat system, and weather monitoring, responsive headquarters for the previously mentioned private interests. This also appears in the video *there*
Looking at the 100 North Main, the other central hub in downtown, a previously condemned tower is repurposed as the headquarters for the Memphis Atmospherics Union in 2044. Out of this building, they manage the increasingly complex drone fleets and air traffic, while also creating leasable space for private interests to store, recharge, refill their drone fleets. As time progresses the drone fleets stratify into new forms the begin to parasitize the host, the 100 North Main building, reforming its structure and facade. In 2068 In a peaceful coup, the Sky Collectives successfully lobby the Memphis government to transfer control of the city’s drone infrastructure to their eco-focused model. The
Sky Collectives prioritize climate resilience and biodiversity over profit-driven or agricultural motives, implementing a radical plan to restore natural ecosystems across the city and farmlands. The appears in the video *there*
In the suburban context, Following the success of cloudseeding on farmland, Delta Commons partners with urban communities in Memphis to provide drone-assisted weather management for gardens, green spaces, and urban farms. The drones, once limited to agricultural use, begin influencing urban microclimates, and the co-ops start negotiating with city officials for broader airspace rights. Delta Commons pioneers the first Weather Commons, a public cooperative where Memphis residents can collectively fund and control drones for personalized weather services. Citizens subscribe to influence rainfall, heat relief, or fog patterns in their neighborhoods. The program fosters community resilience and democratizes
climate adaptation, making weather manipulation an everyday urban utility.
A coalition of local farm cooperatives in the Memphis Delta region, struggling with increasingly erratic weather patterns, pool their resources to invest in drone-based cloud-seeding technology. The co-ops, united under the banner Delta Commons, launch the first agricultural weather-control program, using drones to regulate rain for their crops. Delta Commons, in partnership with local researchers, establishes the first Agri-Urban Ecosystem in Memphis, where rural farmland and urban landscapes are merged into a seamless drone-controlled system. Drones manage not only weather but also pollination, pest control, and soil health, creating a self-sustaining environment that balances agricultural production with urban food needs. This ecosystem blurs the line between city and farm.
Looking around the room, we’ve begun to imagine what the sky might become. On the model in the corner we’ve projected various speculative drone paths. And in the projection in the corner we are showing the sky condition with these drone technologies We imagine Memphis by 2100 has become internationally recognized as the world’s first Sky Commune, a city where decentralized, cooperative-run drone systems fully control weather patterns, atmospheric services, and environmental management. Every resident has a say in how the drones operate, with the entire atmosphere treated as a shared, living resource. Visitors flock to Memphis to experience the unique drone-managed climate and ecosystem. At large the once-local farm cooperative, Delta Commons, evolves into the AgriSky Network, a global alliance of cities and rural communities using drones to manage both urban and agricultural environments. Memphis remains the headquarters, and its model is replicated worldwide.
Drones continue to shape not just the weather but also the political and cultural life of the city, ensuring that the atmosphere remains a common good for all citizens. In Seeded Futures, Memphis becomes a speculative stage where drones redefine not just infrastructure, but identity, politics, and culture. By envisioning a city where the digital penetrates the physical and the sky becomes a shared, living resource, this project challenges the boundaries of governance, autonomy, and community. From purchased personalized micro-weather to cooperative weather systems empowering Memphians, the proposed drone infrastructure blurs lines between machine and citizen, public and private, entertainment and control. Ultimately, Seeded Futures questions what it means to coexist with increasingly intelligent technologies—suggesting a future where Memphis evolves into the world’s first *Sky Commune*, a model for equitable climate adaptation and a testament to the transformative potential of speculative design. Through this lens, the project
offers not just an imagined Memphis but a blueprint for rethinking the relationship between people, technology, and the environment in cities worldwide.
We’ll Revel and Sup
Location: Clearfork Valley, TN
Studio: 2nd Year MLA; Scottie McDaniel
Program: Archive
We’ll Revel and Sup interrogates systems of ecological, material, and political bait and camouflage within Clearfork Valley, TN as a way to reframe the humans place within Appalachia at a geologic scale. The project inherently understands that Coal Appalachia is only a minute part of the history of the mountains and, as such, critiques post-coal rhetoric. The mountains have existed and will continue to exist. Despite our presence in the region being only fleeting, we have deeply scared the earth creating new layers of anthropogenic strata saturated in ecological, economic, and social exploitation.
The Appalachian Mountains have been around for 1.1 billion years, native hunter gatherers first appeared 16,000 years ago, and European settlers only entered 300 years ago. For
the last hundred years, coal companies have decided which land is precious and which is expendable. In this way, life becomes geologic: Carbon from plant matter compressed over millions of years now form a layer of geologic strata that we extract and burn. At the scale of the human life span, this distinction between precious and expendable has charged implications on how we view, use, and exploit the land. At the geologic scale, all is changing, eroding, repairing, degrading, and repairing again. There is no need for us to remediate to help the earth except for our own sake and conscience; it will fix itself albeit in a different form with different species compositions. We, though, view ourselves as precious and worth saving, and so we are entering a transitional phase within the anthropogenic landscape in which we must find a new way to exist. We must reconcile
our exploitation of the land and the living systems, processes, and people within it.
Through investigation of political bait and camouflage, the typology of the knitting circle began to emerge as a critical actor in which those with little political sway, organized and materialized meaningful political action in a way that was perceived as nonthreatening. Knitting circles are a place for conversation, and when the purpose of gathering is to enact reform, the conversation can further the movement. These have appeared in variety of ways some of which are shown on the timeline:
In the 14th Century, knitting guilds were social clubs where male knitters met to improve and develop the art of knitting and to exchange ideas on marketing strategies to sell products to their clientele.
Former enslaved people used sewing or knitting circles to help newly-freed Black Americans adjust to lives of
freedom. Black women used these circles as a way to share information, share resources, or educate each other in a private setting.
British women began to knit secret codes by knitting a series of knots into their projects which were then delivered to military officers who used this information to evade German attacks.
The women of the New York City 27th Assembly District Woman Suffrage Party demonstrated their organizational skill by making 3560 items of clothing for sailors on the USS Missouri. The suffragist Helen Hill told a news reporter that these women could get the job done easily, since “these are the same women who helped get the signatures of more than 500,000 women of New York City who want to vote. “Behind the knitting bags were knitters, and behind the knitters were ballots.
The project is framed as a memorial to coal Appalachia
firmly placed within the Clearfork Valley. An organization, The Knitting Club of Appalachia for Ecological Recording and Response (Pronounced Care Club), begins constructing a living memorial and future relic that functions as a library for geologic, ecological, and social data storage. A group of ecologically minded future thinking individuals from the valley form this group as a way to gather and store meaningful data, finding direction and taking agency in
these nonprecious landscapes camouflaged by isolation. Taking inspiration from the history of craft and histories of visual documentation, they create works that extend beyond the time scale of language moving towards imagery as documentation.
They then become mediators, intervening in moments of existential crisis, by treating the land as nonprecious they
radically reshape the environment over the course of 500 years. Layers of constructed geology from the waste of these interventions begin to layer on top of the monument creating new geologies of loss, crisis, and hope. As they inevitably begin to erode and the repose of data gets exposed, it all serves as a relic to exploitation, crisis, hope, and our own existential narratives.
The primary goal of the KCAERR Club is to document and respond to ecological phenomena at a geologic and evolutionary scale. The organization, like knitting clubs of the past, takes an active role in political activism, in this case environmental activism. The group records by embedding converted data into woven and knit works, as well as narrative based tapestries and quilts. Initially, they are just documenting, but as more is understood and analyzed, they
begin to intervene in these at-risk landscape characters. Because they understand they landscape as nonprecious at the scale of the human, interventions, that are perhaps drastic, become their primary means of working. These projects, though, last tens of years with impacts that last hundreds.
The Anthropocene has increased the volatility of the landscape and processes within creating large scale biothreats that threaten entire species. This, though, is viewed not solely as challenges but as integral components of the evolving narrative of our environment. Over the course of 250 years, they respond to: CWD in 2045 with the help of the TWRA
A genetic Variant of the Goldspotted Oak Borer in 2136 with the help of the USFS
A Psychotropic Pollen Pandemic in 2132 with the help of the WHO
A genetically modified tick in 2216
An organic matter consuming nanotechnology swarm in 2250 with the help of the US military
Importantly, the Smithsonian Institution, in 2068, began financially supporting KCAERR’s research and documentation. As such, they begin to recognize a solution for long term data storage and waste retention. In the short term, as the data is gathered, a place for the textiles is needed that serves both as active storage and as a future relic. In the long term, once the organization begins to intervene at a landscape scale, the waste products need both a place to be stored and serve, once again, as a monument to these histories. In 2076, construction of the armature/monument begins.
The construction of these libraries, within themselves, are a monument to the time in which they are constructed. Construction Methods include:
-Cast Concrete Blocks (Normal Mixture): In this scenario, our existing technique for formulating concrete is used. Today, fly ash is often used as a hardening agent in concrete and in some ways reflects our reliance as coal as an energy source. -Cast Concrete Blocks (Deer Ash Mixture)- The first library/
monument uses the ash from the intervention with deer as a hardening agent in the cast concrete. Every node after, also uses the waste of the corresponding intervention as an aggregate.
-Limestone Blocks- Like the megalithic monuments of the past, limestone blocks are used as the constant in the project. Always limestone. Always a container.
The protection of these libraries and the documents within is facilitated through isolation. The Clearfork Valley’s isolation, hidden by dense forest, narrow, winding roads, and the surrounding mountains, acts as a camouflage of sorts, hiding the monument in plain sight. As the project continues to grow, those from the valley who maintain the land as stewards, are the only ones left, and eventually, they too inhabit the valley no longer. The monument grows, the land erodes, the birds fly over, and the years continue to pass. There is a shame inherent in the project, a recognition that we have destroyed pieces of the land and ruined lives in the process. We’ve poured acid into our waterways and leveled mountains. There is a shame and we must clear our conscience.
Around 2500, all work stops as we’ve exited the Anthropocene and entered the Symbiocene. In the Symbiocene, human action, culture, and enterprise will be exemplified by those cumulative types of relationships and attributes nurtured by humans that enhance mutual interdependence and mutual benefit for all living beings (which is desirable), all species (essential), and the health of all ecosystems (mandatory). The last of the data is sealed away, the final block placed. Departure presents an opportunity for ecological succession, as the remnants of human activity gradually yield to natural processes. The return of apex predators such as wolves underscores the ongoing flux of ecological dynamics, their presence indicative of shifting balances within the ecosystem. The KCAERR club sought to mitigate the impacts of biothreats at a geologic scale, acknowledging the inherent uncertainties and limitations of human intervention. The construction of archival repositories, utilizing materials imbued with the remnants of intervention, serves as
a pragmatic approach to data preservation and environmental stewardship.
It now though all begins to crack, erode, and grow over. Wolves begin to nest in eroding deer ash concrete caverns formed by acid rain which has long been corroding the concrete and limestone blocks because anthropogenic activity. Field mice scurry through the cracks and narrow gaps and create burrows deep within. The moose graze alongside the limestone blocks in the early successional forest. Layers of constructed geologic strata are slowly exposed. They too, are a monument of our histories. We’ve led ourselves into a cycle of anxiety and chronic environmental crisis. This project works to ensure this history is not erased, layering it into the geologic history of the place. It archives our shame, our fear, our hope, and our crisis. We’ve reveled and supped too long, and this is our relic.
Farm & to & Market
Faculty Mentor: Mark Stanley
Contributor: Rose Crawford, Parker Greene, Ella Larkin, Alice Irizarry, Michael Jenks, and Grace Hooper
Program: Rethinking Urban Periphery Agriculture
Farm & To & Market investigates contemporary systems of production, processing, and consumption (especially of food, fuel, and fiber) and the role of architecture within these larger extensive networks of economies, practices, and infrastructures. Agricultural economies are some of the most durable and integral we have, and the systems of production and consumption are increasingly informatic and digitized in the 21st Century (crop yield monitoring, genetic modification, infrared photography, algorithmic logistics, realtime market data, refrigeration regimes, blockchain verification, analytics for individual animals, tailored meal-kit delivery, etc.). Here, everything comes in mixture and in-between—material and immaterial, hardware and software, human and non-human, biotic and abiotic, nature and culture—and it is in the inbetween in which the agency of the designer (or assembler)
can be felt. Not incidentally, this in-between condition also applies to the territory in which these networks increasingly exist: the rural-urban periphery. The liminal fuzz between the urban and the agrarian produces a very important set of conditions necessary for the extension of both further into one another. This speculative design-research project extends these increasingly-wild present conditions into the near future in the form of design proposals, mapping practices, and critical writing and curation.
Harmonic Motion
Location: Knoxville, TN
Studio: 3rd Year Studio, Marleen Davis
Program: Drone Transportation Center
This project aims to orchestrate existing systems, context, typologies, and emerging technology as a way to define the atmosphere of northern Downtown Knoxville and the surrounding communities. It aims to animate the aural atmosphere of the urban corridor and reach into the skies as we imagine the future of transportation.
This project aims to act as a catalyst for the creation of a connection from the Historic Old City and World’s Fair Park through the extension of existing greenway systems. As cities push for more environmentally friendly alternatives for commuter traffic and continued efforts in public health, greenways act as a way to promote such systems, particularly in decentralized cities such as Knoxville. This idea of connection continues as a form and programmatic influence as the site will be the intersection of pedestrian, vehicular, bus, train, and the proposed drone
traffic. Because of the this, site interventions must perform at variety of scales and speeds and respond to existing contextual conditions, while also providing a counter melody that helps invigorate local culture and history. By acting as a centralized pedestrian driven space within the urban context, the proposal aims to create further interest along the Jackson Avenue axis that connects vicariously to market square via the pedestrian friendly urban corridor and to the broader context of the City of Knoxville via greenway. The transit exchange will continue this connection to a broader context using revolutionary drone technology.
This project aims to act as a catalyst for the creation of a connection from the Historic Old City and World’s Fair Park through the extension of existing greenway systems. As cities push for more environmentally friendly alternatives for commuter traffic and continued efforts in public health, greenways act as a way to promote such systems, particularly in decentralized cities such as Knoxville. This idea of connection continues as a form and programmatic influence as the site will be the intersection of pedestrian, vehicular, bus, train, and the proposed drone traffic. Because of the this, site interventions must perform at variety of scales and speeds and respond to existing contextual conditions, while also providing a counter melody that helps invigorate local culture and history. By acting as a centralized pedestrian driven space within the urban context, the proposal aims to create further interest along the Jackson Avenue axis that connects vicariously to market square via the pedestrian friendly urban corridor and to the broader context of the City of Knoxville via greenway. The transit exchange will continue this connection to a broader context using revolutionary drone technology.
After analyzing the public interests in redevelopment in the W Jackson Avenue area, there is an expressed desire for increased public green space, mixed use development, increased parking, and greenway extension. With the surrounding areas already experiencing reinvigoration through renovation and new construction, West Jackson Avenue provides a logical landscape to continue this progress both architecturally and culturally. Hoping to connect with the North Gay Arts District, the site provides an exemplary opportunity to provide a display and interactive creation space as well as providing a location for local makers to display and sell their work. These can also act as generalized individual retail space, like a farmers’ market, or simply being green space.
Along a stepped amphitheater space, groups such as the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, local school bands, or buskers can perform in a informal music in the park style environment.
Located just across the intersection at Jackson and Gay, at the Emporium Center, are the primary offices for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Bordering the site are both the North Gay Arts district and the Dogwood Arts District which is going to help define the decision making process on site. This intersection of the visual arts and music will help connect the site to existing context while attempting to amplify the existing systems.
When looking at the site, one of the prominent drivers for form is the slope of Jackson Avenue as it runs along the edge of the southeastern border of the site. To engage this, a parking podium could be used to discretely provide automated parking that elevates the ground plane to allow for engagement of the street along that edge of the site. The site then connects to the lower elevation of Jackson Avenue as it relates to Jackson Terminal and the higher elevation where it connects to Gay Street. On top of this parking podium, mixed use development could be used to provide experiential conditions much like that of market square just a few blocks away.
The greenway which would run along the train tracks to the north of the site would connect the greenways and bike lanes to the north east of the site in the Magnolia area to the World’s Fair Park, which would inherently connect to the larger system of greenways west of downtown. Along with these, facilities for bicycle storage and associated spaces for the personal cleansing spaces would be located within the
Re-home
Location: 7 Dispersed Sites Across the US
Studio: 3rd Year Studio, Hansjörg Göritz
Contributor: Rose Crawford
Program: Studioli ad Loca
The task of the studio was to envision a bare minimum universal retreat typology adaptable to specifics of multiple places. As such, we were given seven sites across seven climate zones that would later to be used to test the adaptability of the proposal to on-site climate conditions. An emphasis was placed on the tactile and the minimal nature of the humble abode, while reconciling with the prospect that these must be mass producable. Work was divided into 7 phases: Proto-Agenda, Fundamentals, Proto-Components, Proto-Typologies, Proto-Structures, Proto-Places, and the Conclusion
Loinen
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Studio: 4th Year Summer, Mark Stanley and Micah Rutenburg
Contributor: Isabel Evans
Program: Studioli ad Loca
“The parasite lived in the corners of others”
An investigation into the commensal nature of the loinen people in the 1800’s Finnish landscape and their embodiment of characteristics embedded in the social structures of the people. Loinen, as a social parasite that lives off of the benevolence of others, begins to find home in a more modernized world as a group of individuals leeching off of benevolent legal ambiguity. “Every Man’s Right,” at this end, represents a way for a parasitic people to live in the corners of others, making appearances in what is left: benign facades, hidden landscapes, back alleys, and the underground. They act as embellished version of the Finnish people, with an outcome that is independent and isolationist.
Biotic Machine
Location: San Francisco
Studio: 2nd Year Studio, Brian Ambroziak
Contributors: Rose Crawford, Sarina Hermanto, and Keith Carter Program: WHO Headquarters
This design serves as a collector of biotic and abiotic data sets which have an influence on the quality of human life. We imagine the architecture to be alive and alternatively mechanical. The design is about finding a synthesis between the coolness of technology and the heat of the human body which we define as the future of human health.
Thus, the evolution of the site is just as important as the design of the building itself. The building, elevated above the landscape, creates space for both technology and nature to thrive. It is a machine of observation that provides opportunities to be observed. The conservation, nurturing, and cohabitation of nature and human relations are of the utmost importance to the functioning of the machine.
The site, located in the San Francisco Bay on a Hargreaves restored wetland, was chosen to house the migration of the World Health Organization’s (W.H.O.) American headquarters from D.C. as a strategic move to symbolize the changing social, political, economical, and environmental conditions surrounding human health. As we anticipate a rapidly acclimating post-COVID world, we found it tactical to provide a building that could adapt like its cohabitating animal counterparts. For this reason, the site is populated with a “mother”-like a hub and a series of walking buildings that migrate and nest on land and sea, extending the building’s reach and capabilities and creating interactions between the W.H.O. office workers and the site.
Studio: 5th Year Studio; Chad Manley and Faye Nixon
Program: Gentle Land Cultivation through Novel Religious Practice
Religion and the associated craft of music, create space for interpersonal connection, form social institutions, and nurture lineages of generational knowledge. In the research article, “Religion: A Persistent Institution in a Changing Appalachia,” the writers describe that society is a self-equilibriating system within which religion acts as tension management in moments of institutional change. Appalachians, particularly those less affluent, have historically turned towards religion as a way to maintain an identity of self and create a buffer from the outside. As religion has declined, a place for this equilization is disappearing and traditions of generational knowledge are lost.
Despite this, a reframing of key beliefs within these religious groups could provide a method to retrain a cultural understanding of our connection with nature that bridges the sublime and the mundane within the cultivated and uncultivated environment. Capitalizing on the ideas of collective effervescence of both the sacred harp and the shakers and the charismatic utopian communalism of the shakers, the project aims to create new lineages of ecological, cultural, and material knowledge through interventions celebrating the land and its processes.
Through the mapping process I identified moments of intense confluence of native, religious, and infrastructural importance in order to locate potential sites for intervention. The prototypical site in Cherokee, NC sites at the confluence of the blue ridge parkway, Appalachian trail, mountain farm museum, civilian conservation corps, a school, the national park service, the trail of tears, and a nations cemetery. And as gesture I am trying to stitch together these threads, creating knots of acupunctural intervention.
The project is framed through a series of new and adapted hymns that aim to create lineages of heritage craft and land stewardship. These range from work, dance, and worship songs which aim to become the sonic backdrop to the sites. Like the Shakers and those of the Sacred Harp, the songs are infused with doctrine, or instruction on how to engage with the land. So an excerpt is:
Amazing grace, in circles we dance, With joy and hope, our spirits entranced. We plant the seeds upon the fertile ground, In unity, a harvest soon is found.
Verse 2: The circle widens, as seasons turn, Seeds of faith and love we gently churn. Patience, like the earth, we learn to know, For in due time, our gratitude will show.
Chorus: Dancing ‘round, spreading seeds we sow, Watching as the blessings start to grow. Oh, thank the land for gifts we reap, A bountiful harvest, our hearts do keep.
This proposal creates space a space to teach and engage with heritage craft and more, perhaps, independent or sustainable land stewardship practices that place emphasis on the intrinsic worth of the land. The interventions, as shown by these diagrams, are of a slow and gradual progression, slowly leaving marks on the ground that eventually become artifacts of the material and labor lineages. As people dance and circle, perhaps with special shoes, the land becomes tilled and as they dance seeds fall from there bags, planting the ground beneath their feet. Over the course of 100 years of this practice, the ground becomes rippled and begins to alter water flows.
TN MADE
Location: Knoxville, Tennessee
Design Leader: Mark Stanley
Contributors: Rose Crawford and Shakori Carpenter Program: Design Charrette for the University of Tennessee Advanced Materials and Design Research Enterprise
TN MADE is a new research and business incubation facility being developed in the former Local Motors Building near Oak Ridge National Labs. The goals of the TN MADE program are to develop opportunity, expertise, and excitement in our growing manufacturing and design ecosystem; and to foster and attract manufacturing and design companies to start and stay in East Tennessee, mentoring and employing our graduates and community members, and contributing to the prosperity of our region.
Corporate Square Redevelopment
Location: Brookhaven, GA
Studio: Commercial Mixed Use; Summer 2024
Contributors: HKS Commercial Mixed Use and HKS Cities and Communities Program: Mixed Use Development
In my summer internship at HKS Architects, I contributed to the masterplanning of the Corporate Square Redevelopment, a project situated along the Buford Highway Corridor in Brookhaven, Georgia. The site, a former office park, is positioned adjacent to the Peachtree Creek Greenway and represents an opportunity to rethink urban development in an area characterized by both cultural richness and ecological sensitivity. Working closely with the Commercial/Mixed Use and Cities and Communities teams, I was able to apply my dual background in Architecture and Landscape Architecture to explore both architectural character and landscape performance.
My primary responsibilities involved the synthesis of existing site data, including aerial imagery, surveys, and GIS
analysis, to create informed site plans. I was tasked with developing design proposals that responded to the unique conditions of the site, considering not only architectural arrangement but also the environmental impact of runoff on the adjacent creek. Through these efforts, I developed a deeper understanding of the intersection between built form and natural systems, particularly in urban contexts.
A key focus of my work was the cultural context of the Buford Highway Corridor, a space defined by its diverse immigrant community. This necessitated a thoughtful exploration of how cultural identities and histories might be abstracted into the architectural and landscape language of the site. My approach combined the documentation of local precedents—both architectural and cultural—with
computational design methods, specifically Grasshopper, to generate spatial and material logics that responded to these cultural cues. I explored color, pattern, and form as design drivers, considering how these elements could influence both the architectural aesthetics and the landscape character of the redevelopment.
Throughout the project, I also participated in the creation of presentation drawings, including illustrative site plans, vignettes, and maps, which were integral to communicating the design’s conceptual framework to the team and external stakeholders. In doing so, I was able to contribute to a multidisciplinary approach to the project, one that balanced technical rigor with a nuanced understanding of the social and ecological forces shaping the site’s future.
Project Highlights
• 1,500 New Residential Units across a variety of product types
• 1.0-acre Activated Public Plaza with 20,000 SF of Retail and Amenities
• 2.0-acre Public Park adjacent to Peachtree Creek Greenway
• 150-key Hotel and 100,000 Sf of MOB to support the surrounding medical and healthcare hub
HKS Project Helix
Project Highlights
• 1,500 New Residential Units across a variety of product types
• 1.0-acre Activated Public Plaza with 20,000 SF of Retail and Amenities
• 2.0-acre Public Park adjacent to Peachtree Creek Greenway
• 150-key Hotel and 100,000 Sf of MOB to support the surrounding medical and healthcare hub
Full Build Program
Residential: 932,000 SF / 1,120 Units
Senior Residential: 203,000 SF / 176 Units
Hotel: 131,000 GSF / 150 Keys
Retail: 20,000 GSF
Parking: 846,000 GSF / 2,231 Spaces
Street Parking: 90 Spaces
Townhouse: 323,000 GSF / 120 Homes
Short-Term Rentals: 92,000 SF / 114 Units
MOB: 100,000 GSF
TOTAL SF: 2,673,000 GSF
Breakdown
A Townhouses: 41 Units; 113,000 GSF
B Townhouses: 79 Units; 219,000 GSF
C
Multifamily: 349 Units; 460,000 Sf Parking: 538 Spaces
D1
Multifamily: 145 Units; 124,000 Sf Retail: 7,000 Sf Parking: 103 Spaces
D2
Multifamily: 260 Units; 222,000 Sf Retail: 7,000 Sf Parking: 605 Spaces + 122 in Podium
E Retail: 6,000 GSF with Roof Level
F Multifamily: 320 Units; 561,000 SF incl. Garage
F/G Parking: 614 Spaces
G Senior Living: 176 Units; 176,000 Sf H
Short-Term Rentals: 114 Units; 92,000 Sf Surface Parking: 119 Spaces
I Medical Office Building: 100,000 GSF
I/J
Parking: 134 Units
J Hotel: 150 Keys; 131,000 GSF
Street Parking 90 Spaces
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HKS Project Helix
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University Campus :: Planting Design
Location: Knoxville, TN
Class: LAR 535; Mike Ross
Program: University Campus Redesign
Architecture Narrative
This project reimagines a central piece of the University of Tennessee campus by transforming the Volunteer Blvd. parking garage plinth into a dynamic humanities hub. Inspired by the master plan’s vision for a new humanities quad on the site of the current HSS and McClung Tower buildings, the design introduces a multi-layered architectural concept. An expanded basement level, formerly a parking garage, now houses humanities classrooms, creating a unique interplay between the above- and below-ground experiences. Along Volunteer Blvd., the façade of the plinth opens to the street, allowing natural light to flood perimeter classrooms, while skylights punctuate the roof to illuminate deeper interior spaces. Atop the plinth, a sinuous two-story classroom building winds across the site, forming intimate
courtyards and integrating with a thoughtfully designed landscape. This curvilinear structure ensures that every interior space enjoys access to natural light and views of the surrounding environment. The design merges functionality with artistry, establishing a new architectural centerpiece for the campus.
Landscape Narrative
The landscape design playfully engages with topography, texture, pattern, and color, creating a dynamic interplay between natural and structured elements. The striped grass prairie typology provides a consistent underlay, interjecting the curvilinear form of the building and landscape with a bold, rhythmic pattern. Mounded rain gardens address stormwater management while serving as sculptural features,
blending functionality with aesthetics. Perimeter mounds act as a playscape and create diverse spaces for study, socialization, and respite. Along Volunteer Blvd., the plinth’s edge dissolves in select locations, giving way to naturalized slopes that connect the upper designed landscape to the bioswales below. The planting palette emphasizes yellows, oranges, and reds, nodding subtly to university colors
and celebrating the vibrancy of fall foliage. By combining ecological benefits with high design, the landscape creates a memorable campus placemaker that harmonizes with the architecture.
Pedestrian Perspective Narrative
As pedestrians move through the site, they encounter
a landscape that blurs the line between ground and architecture. Approaching from the west or north, the plinth roof appears as a seamless extension of the ground plane, punctuated by sculptural skylights that offer glimpses into the classrooms below. Meandering paths lead through the site, flanked by vibrant rain gardens and mounded spaces that invite interaction and exploration.
The sinuous classroom building creates an alternating sense of enclosure and openness, forming pockets of activity and quiet reflection. Along Volunteer Blvd., naturalized slopes draw pedestrians toward the bioswales, creating moments of connection between the upper landscape and the street. The interplay of textures, colors, and topography provides an engaging sensory experience, making the site a lively yet
contemplative campus destination.
Non-Human Perspective Narrative
For non-human inhabitants, the site offers a mosaic of habitats that support biodiversity and ecological health. The rain gardens capture and filter stormwater, creating microhabitats for aquatic and semi-aquatic species.
Perimeter mounds and naturalized slopes introduce diverse vegetation layers, providing shelter and forage for birds, pollinators, and small mammals. The striped grass prairie, with its structured yet varied planting, offers a consistent food source and refuge for insects and ground-dwelling fauna. Seasonal plantings with vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds create a dynamic ecosystem that evolves throughout
the year, attracting migratory species and supporting year-round activity. The site’s design prioritizes ecological function alongside aesthetic appeal, ensuring that the campus’s non-human inhabitants are integral participants in its transformation.
Williams Creek Watershed
Location: Knoxville, TN
Class: LAR 534; Chad Manley
Program: Watershed Ecological Analysis and Redesign
The Williams Creek watershed is east of downtown Knoxville, TN and flows directly into the Tennessee River. Of importance, one of the municipal water intakes from the Tennessee for the city of Knoxville is directly at the end of the stream, making stream health of critical importance for public health. Following urban renewal in the sixties, black populations shifted east out of the old city area into the neighborhoods surrounding William’s Creek. Today the area is still a lower income, predominantly minority population. Largely this exists as single family homes on small lots, however, some of the newer developments are multifamily. The ecological matrix is largely based on a typical condition of turf grass and a few large trees in each yard. On the northern end of the watershed several larger roads cut across with some larger commercial zones along them. At the scale
of the homeowner, riparian corridor and stream bank heath varies widely along the length of the stream with some homes having no riparian corridor and steep eroding stream banks. Beyond this though, the watershed has several potential point source locations for pollution which include: Vulcan Materials, General Shale, Dumping in the Williams Creek Urban Forest, Williams Creek Golf Course, abandoned gas stations, auto body shops, and a number of others. These all are inherently tied to human and ecological health with some of the impacts being issues with gene expression, DNA breakage, broken DNA-protein interactions, increased mortality, and reduced breeding potential in fish populations and impaired nervous system function, cataracts, optic nerve degeneration, decreased birth rate, cancers, delayed bone formation, bone marrow damage, aplastic anemia,
and a vast number of others. In some ways, a key part of understanding the wellbeing of this creek is through the lens of environment justice, and as such, the project investigates the relationships between the community and the ecology of the stream.
I.
The project imagines several means of species propagation and dispersal as a way to address social and ecological vectors embedded in the project. Beyond this, the species themselves require different methods for propagation and dispersal which opens up new opportuni-ties for ecological ritual, public engagement, and ecological bloom.
Lophocolea appalachiana is critically imperiled within the entire native range in Appalachia, due to dams, recreation disturbance, and disturbance to the wet rocks in which it typically grows. As such, this project aims to become a propagative hub within Knoxville in which typical means of propagation are used in novel ways to increase the net dispersal of the plant. A removed segment of the plant, if
removed, will quickly begin to grow both if left on the surface of the water or if planted in the ground. The project aims to use both means of propagation in which, yearly, as an act of ecological ritual, the segments of the plants are all cut and placed into the stream in hopes of snagging a rock, branch, log, or any other obstruction, leading to new plants down stream. Over the course of several years, the project
Williams Creek Watershed
hopes to have an established population of Lophocolea appalachiana within the Williams Creek watershed. Additionally, when these cuttings are taken, the project proposes a nursery of sorts in which aquatic plants such as this can be donated or sold to local communities to grow in their own yards. Streambank conditions varied greatly between the private properties abutting the stream. To
address this, the nursery aims to allow people to take agency within the stream, and for those who don’t opt in, the act of dispersal by water flow could allow for their banks to be inhabited.
Pontederia cordata is native wetland plant that grows along stream banks and/or just within the water. Like the plant
above, Pontederia cordata will also be dispersed via both the waterway itself and through the nursery. In the fall, it will drop seed pods into the water will flow down the stream until obstructed, hopefully creating a new population within the stream that is natural propagating. In addi-tion to this, the plant can be propagated through division, so it will also be divided and, once again, sold or donated to local
residents as a way to create moments of personal agency within the watershed.
Chasmanthium latifolium naturally occurs near waterways is tolerant to wet soils and prefers well drained soils. Unlike the others, the plant is not intended to propagate via water movement, although because it can spread aggressively,
Williams Creek Watershed
will likely propagate itself beyond its original planting. This, is combination with its overall toughness/tolerances, could allow it to perform well in these urban condi-tions. In addition to its seed and rhizomatic self propagation, it will also be divided and donated or sold at the nursery.
The nursery infrastructure, as proposed, is a small shed
along the street at the start of the creek. The structure is quite simple, and perhaps temporary, and generally serves as a place for propagation and dispersal to the community. As currently imagined, rainwater, collected in a barrel from the roofs, will irrigate the setup. In general, the project aims to capitalize on natural means of propagation and dispersal, beyond what is described with the examples above, and for
those that require human input, require minimal labor.
II.
The project proposes a series of nurseries at the low order ends of the legs of the stream. These serve as both a symbolic and literal place of propagation and dispersal within the watershed. Because the project is aiming to use
the stream as a key dispersal strategy, placing the nursery at the beginning allows for all sections of the stream to potentially be planted. This dispersed network too would allow for a broader community to engage with and take agency within the stream. By celebrating and symbolically placing the nurseries here, the project hopes to embed a greater sense of ecological respect and communal pride
