KATIE O’CONNELL Fusion of Waste
ADVISOR: Hansjörg Göritz
If we continue down the destructive and wasteful path we are on, we will ruin the nation’s landscape. We must stop using the land for our gain and then abandoning it when it is no longer of use to us. Around the country, abandoned or cancelled nuclear power plants can be found, with many of them being TVA projects. Specifically, the Hartsville Nuclear Power Plant, which is about 150 miles from Knoxville, sits in a state of disrepair and abandonment. Now it is a scar on the landscape showing man’s control of the land and the abandonment when the land was no longer of value to us.
BACHELOR OF ARCHITECTURE
The site can be used to demonstrate ways to deal with exploitation while creating a space for people to enjoy and a place for people to brutally understand what we have done. It must boldly show the exploitation that has occurred and teach people that we must change our ways of using the land. From the existing nuclear buildings remaining, three scars were formed that stretch across the site as trenches representing three harmful energy harvesting techniques, natural gas, oil and coal. As a juxtaposition, four healed landscape scars indicate what the land could become once we return value to it. The remainder of the site serves as a beautiful landscape garden, contrasting experiences of positive and negative when moving from the brutal trenches to the appealing landscape.