An effort of the Landscape Architecture program to help improve the health of regional water resources and the communities they sustain has been recognized with a state award.
The American Society of Landscape Architects Tennessee Chapter recently gave UT an award of honor in the professional planning and analysis category of its 2014 Design Awards Program. The award lauded UT’s partnership with the Plan East Tennessee (PlanET) regional planning study, which aims to address the region’s watershed challenges.
During the past three years, more than 100 students and eight faculty members from the Landscape Architecture program have worked on eleven projects with community partners in five counties as part of the effort. The value of UT’s work was estimated at $1 million, based on students’ time, facilities, and faculty resources dedicated to the projects.
Several projects associated with the PlanET effort also were recognized:
- Alumna Angelike Angelopoulos’s project titled “Mind Body and Soul: Performance Landscapes for a Healthy Community” won an award of honor in the student awards general design category. The project explored the adaptive reuse of the areas beneath the Interstate 275 and Interstate 40 interchanges in Knoxville’s Blackstock District.
- The work of graduate students Clay Lezon, Brandon Orrick, Clint Wayman, Caroline Sneed, and Jessica Neary—a vision plan for the city of Townsend and Highway 321 corridor—won an award of excellence in the planning and analysis category. Angelopoulos and graduate students Cameron Rodman and Whitney Tidd’s vision plan for the Highway 61 corridor at Norris received an award of honor in the planning and analysis category. Amanda Gann, a graduate architecture student, also contributed to the Highway 61 project. Both plans encourage compact mixed-use development along these scenic highway corridors, promoting growth patterns that preserve their landscape while creating a more cohesive built environment that become destinations for local residents and tourists.
- “Greenway Guidelines for the East Tennessee Region: Recommendations for Water, Rail and Roadside Trails in Regional Landscapes,” an outreach publication authored by program faculty members Tracy Moir-McClean and Valerie Friedmann, architecture lecturer Sean Martin, landscape program students Clay Lezon and Clint Wayman, and architecture students Matt Barnett and Taylor Dotson, received an award of excellence in the professional design awards communication category. The publication provides an introduction to greenway corridor design and assists local planners and governments in designing greenway trails, fixtures, furnishings, and buffers.
Two other projects not associated with PlanET won awards:
- Rodman received an Award of Merit in the Student Awards General Design category for his studio project at Harmony Adoptions’ Family Center at Camp Montvale. His project proposes a therapeutic “sensory stations playground,” an interactive landscape that would be an integral part of Harmony’s adoptive therapy programs and family building initiative.
- The New Norris House team, which included Friedmann as well as architecture faculty Tricia Stuth and Bob French, received an award of honor in the professional research category for its research on sustainable water systems that are integrated into designed landscapes at the New Norris House. The three-year project has fostered conversations about rainwater and graywater regulations in Tennessee.
UT’s Landscape Architecture program is offered through a collaboration between the College of Architecture and Design and the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources. It is the only accredited graduate landscape architecture program in Tennessee.
—
C O N T A C T :
Kiki Roeder (865-974-6713, kroeder@utk.edu)
Lola Alapo (865-974-3993, lalapo@utk.edu)