Site Selection

Initially I thought a site close to an urban center would be the best place to explore my thesis topic. If I'm interested in revealing something about site ecology I need an audience, and an urban or suburban site would easily provide that. However, many large urban open spaces are brownfields, or, at the very least, have been marred in some way by human development.

The vacant General Shale Brick Factory site is in close proximity to Downtown Knoxville and UTK Campus, but like most large, available spaces in urban areas, it would require extensive remediation before other design concepts could be explored.

If my intent is to reveal something about ecology, it would complicate the project if ecological remediation was required first. What I needed to find was a site with a dedicated user group and an already rich ecology.

SIWR is located about 20 miles east of downtown Knoxville on the very edge of Knox County.

Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge (SIWR) is a 360 acre wildlife sanctuary located on a peninsula along the French Broad River. The land is managed by Knox County Parks and the Legacy Parks Foundation. The site consists of an extensive floodplain meadow, a small wetland, several wooded bluffs, and an upland pond. The site is home to over 150 species of birds and 50 species of fish.

A mown path meanders through the meadow in late September.

What makes SIWR the right site for my thesis? There are many reasons - It has an existing rich and complex ecology, it is an important area to protect for future generations of many different rare species, the French Broad River has a unique history unto itself, and it is an important resource for human enjoyment as well.

Where to begin...

Have you ever been so excited to start something and equally terrified of it?

That's how I feel about the thesis process, but the time is now, so here we go.

I've known for about 4 years that I wanted to go to grad school. And I've known for about 7 years that I wanted to study landscape architecture. The human experience of the natural and built environment has always interested me, and I have always sensed that our surroundings have a profound, but usually subconscious, ability to affect us. But how does our environment affect us? How can we amplify this affect and bring it into consciousness? Do we feel more aware in some places and not in others? Can our surroundings change the way we think or feel about the land? What knowledge can we glean from the physical world?

There are a countless explorations into the psychology our environments, and while this work is very interesting to me, as a design student I am choosing to focus on architectural interventions on the land to create an affective experience. Through what medium the landscape can tell you about itself? Can we reveal something about the land through design? Can we create a visible, physical, and intellectual connection between societies and the ecosystems that support them?

A huge obstacle thus far has been focusing and editing my questions and ideas. In an effort to narrow the topic I have begun researching a design movement coined eco-revelatory design.

More to come on this topic and site selection...