Andrew Madl, assistant professor of landscape architecture at �����Ƶ, has published his latest book with AR+D, “

Through a graphic novel format, the book investigates alternative realities in which nuclear project proposals by the U.S. government, that were not carried out, are implemented, particularly along the “Nuclear Highway” stretching across Interstate 25, in the Southwestern United States.

“It’s very much a reflective book that investigates the agency of landscape to address current and future entanglements between technology, ecology, and social conditions from past scenarios,” said Madl. “The graphic novel format is a product of the content. Maybe how absurd it is in some ways, even though it is based and grounded in reality and factual evidence, it became a way to disseminate design research in a way that moved beyond verbal and written format.”

Through a combination of storytelling, design speculation, and counterfactual history, “The Nuclear Chronicles” not only sheds light on these charged landscapes but also offers design strategies for their future resilience and adaptation.

Madl is presenting his research in diverse formats, including an exhibition at UT’s College of Architecture and Design’s Downtown �����Ƶ window display. Featuring large, foam-core dioramas and a life-size cutout of one of the novel’s characters, the “nuclear cowboy,” the exhibition draws viewers into speculative environments where proposals like massive cow graveyards—originally designed for disease outbreaks—are reinterpreted as future recreation reservoirs. The exhibit blurs the lines between real-world proposals and speculative fiction, encouraging audiences to rethink land use, technology, and infrastructure.

In addition to the exhibition, Madl produced a short film based on the first chapter of the novel, for entry into film festivals.

“The Nuclear Chronicles: Cultivated Aftermath” is a CGI short film which blends 3D animated sequences with historical events from the book and explores the intersection of military technology and landscape, using the story of the McDonald Ranch, where the world’s first nuclear bomb was assembled and detonated during the Trinity test.

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, Anthony Titus, September 9

Surface Mining — A Sequel will focus upon the structure of Anthony’s transdisciplinary practice of art and architecture. He will speak about a selection of exhibitions, projects, and teaching pedagogy that spans the past decade, emphasizing the processes and procedures and the final product of the works.

Anthony is looking to explore and discover new possibilities between the spaces of architecture, sculpture and painting. The conversation and exchange between these disciplines serves as a rich space of opportunity to enhance and expand our current understanding of space, form, color, and structure as participants in a larger cultural landscape.

, Javier Sánchez, HFAIA, September 23

JSa is a Mexican architecture studio founded in 1996 by Javier Sánchez, with urban acupuncture as a vision to conceive comprehensive architectural interventions that contribute towards the continuous rehabilitation of the urban fabric.

Today, partners Aisha Ballesteros and Benedikt Fahlbusch —alongside Sánchez— are the core of the practice. And together lead a team headquartered in Mexico City, and a secondary studio in Lima, Peru led by Irvine Torres.

Stemming from the French tradition of the atelier, the team approaches design as a collective process, immersed in a continuous cycle of research, urban approximation, architectural project and adaptability to the ever-evolving social, urban and environmental challenges. With this conviction as premise, the studio gained early recognition with a series of seminal projects that together prompted the renewal of downtown Mexico City at the turn of the century.

Throughout the past three decades, JSa has realized over 180 projects in Mexico, South America and Europe. Encompassing five cross-complementary axes around: the recovery of heritage and promotion of culture; the conception of unique hospitality and dining experiences; the design of versatile community and workspaces; the integration of sustainable solutions; and the continuous exploration of housing as the foundation of the urban ecosystem.

, Kim Yao, FAIA, September 24

In conjunction with the fall 2024 publication of the monograph Architecture. Research. Office., Principal Kim Yao will present the design of the practice as a project in itself. “Architecture” is the firm’s ultimate objective, which for ARO means creating beautifully crafted work that benefits people; “research” grounds its methodology and informs its approach; and “office” reflects the idea that creating architecture in support of people starts with the community and culture of the firm itself. Key projects completed over the past three decades, representing the firm’s diverse body of work, will be the means to describe the principles that guide ARO’s work, the firm’s methodology and its culture.

Yao’s lecture will be held off-campus in collaboration with AIA East Tennessee at 11:50 a.m.–1 p.m. at the Foundry On the Fair Site.

, Lucy McRae, October 28

In 20 to 40 years’ time, technologies such as CRISPR will transform humanity and redefine many of society’s structures. When humans are born outside of the body in labs, who will shape these reproductive habitats– and for what purpose?

Calling forth these likely futures, we explore new and interdisciplinary avenues for architecture and design through a process of narrative prototyping: provoking impossible questions and exploring ways in which science fiction can spark real-world discourse.

Incubating a mind state that trusts the unknown, Lucy develops methods for pioneering new aesthetics, new stories, and new ways of being together in the world.

Regional Globalism in the Tennessee Valley, November 3–December 4

The exhibition will be held in the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture. Regional Globalism in the Tennessee Valley is curated by School of Archiecture’s Assistant Professor Micah Rutenberg.

, Mark Lee, November 18

Mark Lee is a founding partner of Johnston Marklee, based in Los Angeles. Since its establishment in 1998, Johnston Marklee has been recognized nationally and internationally with over 50 major awards. Projects undertaken by Johnston Marklee are diverse in scale and type, spanning fourteen countries throughout North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the permanent home for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP) at Roy Lichtenstein Studio in New York’s Greenwich Village; the Menil Drawing Institute in Houston, Texas; the UCLA Graduate Art Studios campus in Culver City, California; and a renovation of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Current projects include the residential towers, Ray Nashville, in Tennessee, and Ray Phoenix, in Arizona; a renovation of the UCLA Reverend James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center in Los Angeles; and the interior architecture and museology within the Kunstmuseum Hauptbau in Basel Switzerland, in collaboration with Christ & Gantenbein.

Support for the College of Architecture and Design’s lecture series is championed by the Robert B. Church III Memorial Lecture Fund.

Unless otherwise noted, lectures are held at 5:30 p.m. in McCarty Auditorium, room 109, in the Art + Architecture Building.

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“Today marks a significant milestone in the lives of our students,” said Dean Jason Young. “For many members of the Class of 2024, this day is an especially meaningful because their high school graduations and their first year in our program, along with other major life moments, were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We’re thrilled to celebrate them today and we hope this occasion becomes a cherished memory for all in attendance.”

The college’s commencement address was delivered by archimania Cofounder and CEO Barry Alan Yoakum, FAIA. A 1978 graduate of the School of Architecture, Yoakum credits his third-grade teacher for becoming an architect, his uncle Rhea Burns for his love of the Vols, and his father for instilling that he could become whatever he dreamed. In his address, Yoakum asked graduates to remember the first time they dreamed of becoming a graphic designer, a landscape architect, an interior architect, or an architect.

“You have come a long way from that moment,” he said. “Enjoy today. Revel in the moment of being a graduate, then tomorrow, begin dreaming a new dream that helps you to become the very best you. I want to thank you for helping me to remember how I became me. It’s the people and the moments that shape who we become.”

During the college’s celebration for graduates and their families, prior to the commencement ceremony, Yoakum was recognized by the UT chapter of Tau Sigma Delta Honors Society with the Silver Medal. The honor recognizes a professional with a distinction in design in architecture, landscape architecture or the allied arts.

Shakori Carpenter, a bachelors of architecture graduate, addressed her classmates and shared how her mother’s practice of attributing and integrating aspirational words for each year allowed her to reflect upon her five years at UT.

“The education itself is important, but what is more crucial are the relationships we garnered through it. Life is about enrichment, exploration and togetherness. When you have a person or a group of people there for you, it truly makes a difference.”

Watch the college’s commencement ceremony and others .

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The inaugural class welcomed 10 students and has since graduated more than 150 professionals. Currently, the program supports over 40 full-time students, attracting candidates from a variety of backgrounds, as the curriculum delves into the breadth of the field.

“We are exposing students to the different career outcomes in landscape architecture,” said Director Gale Fulton. “We are enhancing our students’ education through the diverse research of our faculty, interdisciplinary projects across campus, and prioritizing regional travel which has led to students thinking about the potential of landscape architecture very differently than they do prior to starting the program.”

As a part of its curriculum, the school provides significant opportunity and support for travel. This semester’s Landscapes in Transition studio, led by Assistant Professors Scottie McDaniel and Sarah Bolivar, took first-year students to Hot Springs, North Carolina, to engage in close studies of its landscapes. Fellow Chad Manley and Assistant Professor Faye Nixon’s second-year studio, Crafting Appalachia, visited sites across seven states where students met with a wide range of individuals and groups engaged in landscape-related projects across the Appalachian region.

The school has expanded its financial investment in students’ experience to include subsidizing the cost to attend the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) national conference. This semester, with additional support from the college and Tennessee ASLA chapter, the school funded more than 20 students’ travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where students experienced new landscapes, networked with professionals and alums, and learned about the expanded scope of contemporary landscape architecture.

“We are focused on tuning students into the world around them and inspiring them to see how important it is to travel and see landscapes and cities,” said Fulton. “Many of our students have not had the opportunity to travel to the places that we’re able to get them to, and we’re trying to extend the time of these trips so that they have time to slow down and see places more critically.”

Fulton credits the school’s diverse faculty and their research as an added benefit for students developing a broad understanding of the field. This fall, the school grew to house four full-time tenure-track professors, a fellow, and two lecturers. These new faculty are currently pursuing diverse research interests including:

Assistant Professor Andrew Madl has actively pursued publications since starting at UT. In spring 2021, he published his first book, Parametric Design for Landscape Architects: Computational Techniques and Workflows, describing computational workflows and processes in the study and design of landscape architecture. Madl is currently working on a graphic novel on speculative landscapes of the Southwest United States.

Earlier this semester, Madl co-facilitated the college’s bi-annual symposium, Speculative Landscapes: Conversations on Future Thinking. The symposium focused on how landscape architects and designers think about the future and their role as well as the implementation and evolution of the landscapes they conjure and construct.

McDaniel’s research focuses on land practices of the South with an emphasis on the southern highlands. Her recent exhibition, Rural Ways, featured recurrent Appalachian artifacts to give audiences a deeper understanding of embedded rural knowledge through hands-on materials. McDaniel is currently collaborating with the university’s Department of Geography and Sustainability on research related to the region.��

Bolivar and Nixon joined the college earlier this semester. Prior to UT, Bolivar worked in private and public planning and design with AECOM and the Central Park Conservancy. Earlier this month, Bolivar was co-awarded a $40,000 grant from the Tennessee RiverLine and One Health Initiative for a collaborative project that will prototype floating wetland and shoreline modules along the Third Creek Greenway.

“Although I have only been here a few months, it’s evident how eager and ambitious people are to create social and ecological impact at multiple scales,” said Bolivar. “I have had opportunities to chat with people in ecology, sociology, engineering, and other departments. This collaborative and open culture reaffirms my commitment and excitement to be teaching at UT.”

Nixon came to the university after working as a landscape designer for the non-profit planning and design firm Kounkuey Design Initiative in Los Angeles and for the Oslo-based office of Snøhetta. She co-taught remotely for the school during the pandemic, and her positive experience later led her to apply for the full-time opportunity.

As a part of the Speculative Landscapes symposium, Nixon presented some of her early research ruminations into shifting nature-culture relations within the context of technologically mediated and virtual environments designed for immersive play.

Each of the faculty’s research efforts has already begun to develop connections across campus and in the community that will establish interdisciplinary studios and research initiatives.

“Our faculty are continuing the school’s commitment to shaping regional and local landscapes and cultures,” said Fulton. “Our growth has broadened the school’s research and teaching capabilities and, ultimately, will lead us to expand landscape architecture education at UT.”

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Architecture

Frances Hsu is an assistant professor at UT. She formerly taught at Marywood University School of Architecture, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and Aalto University. She is a licensed architect, designer and scholar whose work, at multiple scales, explores architecture and urbanism from a territorial perspective. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Architectural Education, Clog, Footprint, Contemporary Architectural Education Journal, The Cambridge Architectural Journal, and others. She worked as a designer at OMA and UN Studio. She also has presented and published on hybrid research-design practice.

Julie Kress is the school’s next Tennessee Architecture Fellow. She has already made a mark at the school and college as a lecturer and curator. Her fellowship project will bring a curator’s instinct to index, catalog, and collect animate modes of production and match that with her experience as a prolific maker. While Kress’ work will see her in dialogue with a rich contemporary tradition of digital animate form, her pursuits demand an expansive field of architecture that includes experiences, materiality, tectonics, joinery and effect.

Jeremy Magner has been appointed assistant professor after serving as lecturer in the school and a Tennessee Architecture Fellow from 2020-2022. In his teaching, research, and practice, Magner challenges conventional boundaries between designer and builder with the aim of developing a deeper engagement with the means of production of architecture and its consequences—human, material, and ecological. In 2015, he was selected as an artist-in-residence and affiliated artist at AUTODESK Pier 9 Workshop and for many years managed project fabrication and design for notable firms including robotics-leader Machineous as well as Gensler, Morphosis and others.⁣

Assistant Professor Micah Rutenberg previously served as a lecturer of architecture at UT, where he’s been teaching and conducting research on the infrastructural, technological, and ecological arrays that shape patterns of urbanization and territorial administration in the Tennessee Valley region. He was awarded the 2017-2018 Tennessee Architecture Fellowship, during which time he executed, Techno-Scientific Petting Zoo of the Anthropogenic Sublime, a speculative design-research project that seeks to re-frame the relationship between natural, cultural, and technological systems surrounding Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He is co-authoring, “The Logistics of Mechanized Landscapes: Mapping the TVA,” and is currently in development on a Regional Globalism book, in connection with the college’s two interdisciplinary symposia which was held under his co-leadership.

Mark Stanley has been promoted to assistant professor after serving as senior lecturer in the School of Architecture. He is the co-founder of StudioMARS, a speculative design-research practice. Stanley’s research and teaching studies architecture’s entanglements with larger systems of culture, technology, and ecology. His projects imagine the agency of architecture and the architect within these relationships and are often produced as speculative design conveyed through experimental representation where architecture is often one part of a larger critical project grappling with the present conditions of a collective existence in the 21st Century.

Associate Professor Catty Dan Zhang comes to UT from UNC Charlotte. She’s the founder of Temporary Office, a practice that explores architecture and digital technology through the production of exhibitions, objects, drawings, animations, installations and writings. Zhang’s recent solo exhibition “Bubble Bath / Interior Cities 0.5” was on display at the MetroLab at Florida Atlantic University. Her design work has also been featured in group exhibitions at the ‘T’ Space, London Design Festival, Carnegie Museum of Arts, A+D Museum, Harvard GSD, among other institutions. Her recent work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, as well as several institutional grants during 2017-2023. Zhang was a finalist of the Harvard GSD’s Wheelwright Prize in 2018 and 2021. She was awarded the first prize in the Pamphlet Architecture 37 competition and is the author of the forthcoming volume in the Pamphlet Architecture series.

Design

Timothy Arment transitions into a new role in the school as the Digital Futures Fellow overseeing the forthcoming Digital Futures Lab. Arment has served as a lecturer in the school since 2019. His fine art practice typically uses software and cutting-edge technology to investigate the boundaries of reality and perception.

Matthew Flores is the 2023–25 Fellow in the School of Design, interdisciplinary artist and designer. His studio practice is rooted in strategies of misdirection and appropriation, and orbits around an interest in how the art viewing experience can be analogized with the format of jokes, performance, and the theatrical. He was awarded the 2023 Idea Capital Atlanta Creative Grant, a Creative Residency Fellowship at Hambidge Center for Creative Arts, selected as one of Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s 2019 Ones to Watch, and attended a 2023 Residency at The Luminary in St. Louis, Missouri.

Landscape Architecture

Sarah Bolivar is an assistant professor of landscape architecture whose research explores how individual and collective actions can support migrating plants and wildlife, and by extension, the palpable and cultural meaning they hold in people’s lives. Bolivar has worked on drinking water resource management with the local government in Bellingham, Washington, landscape conservation and design with the Central Park Conservancy, and private and public planning and development with AECOM. Her process emphasizes multimedia storytelling as a tool for building participatory and inclusive environments whereby the public imagination can conceive more porous, hybrid, and resilient landscapes.

Farre “Faye” Nixon joins the college as an assistant professor after working as a landscape designer for the non-profit planning and design firm Kounkuey Design Initiative in Los Angeles and for the Oslo-based office of Snøhetta. Nixon believes that the transdisciplinary work required to address the challenges of the Anthropocene presents an opportunity to enrich and transform the design practice. As such, her research includes investigating speculative and critical design methodologies, using creative writing techniques such as worldbuilding as a design tool, interrogating the ways emerging technologies and design intersect, and co-designing with humans and their non-human counterparts within the context of uncertain climate futures.

Andrew Madl previously served as a lecturer and adjunct faculty member in the school since 2017 and has been appointed assistant professor. His work focuses on the exploration and registration of computation/advanced digital technologies in the landscape. Within his research, Madl seeks to expose landscape consequences through schemas at the confluence of, and in response to, monumental technological advancements ranging from the nuclear bomb to artificial intelligence. He is currently working on a graphic novel with AR+D publishing, presenting speculative landscape scenarios for nuclear test sites in the western United States. He has recently authored and published “Parametric Design for Landscape Architects: Computational Techniques and Workflows.”

Scottie McDaniel has been promoted to assistant professor after serving the school as a lecturer and adjunct faculty member since 2018. Her research is situated on land practices of the South with an emphasis on the southern highlands, a region she loves and understands is riddled with nuance, contradiction, and lingering trauma. Through her work, McDaniel aims to explore, unfold, and exhibit the complexity of the Southern landscape.

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UT’s Chad Manley, a fellow and lecturer of landscape architecture, and Jeremy Magner, assistant professor of architecture, worked with Thena Tak, assistant professor of architecture at Bard College, on a community planning and fire management project throughout the summer in Junction City and Trinity County. The research team met with community members, representatives and stakeholders to learn about the town’s need to renovate buildings and its community park after the impacts of a lightning-caused wildfire in 2021. Later named the Monument fire, the wildfire forced the town to evacuate and burned an estimated 223,124 acres across California.

Manley traveled to the city earlier in the spring with a group of graduate landscape architecture students as a part of their design studio. Students visited three study sites, including Trinity County, to learn about the devastation and ecological renewal that fire leaves behind. Once back on campus, students used design tools to learn about reintegrating fire safely into practice.

“With students, we had a chance to meet so many strong people and unique institutions who were creatively organizing to face the challenges of historical injustice, economic collapse, and ecological recovery following massive wildfires. As the summer began, we were met with an invitation to return to Junction City and Weaverville, and headed back there to continue these conversations,” said Manley. “As designers, we asked ourselves how can our skills compliment all of the on-going efforts made by members of these communities?”

Upon arriving in the town, the research team began visiting different events, talking with people and trying to understand the landscape. They learned about grant-funded initiatives, such as the Trinity River restoration project, took part in prescribed burns, and visited nurseries propagating native plants. Throughout this process, the team began developing drawings for what Manley refers to as “nested refugia”, encompassing the town’s park, swimming hole and grange hall.

In late July, they presented a series of concept drawings for the three sites in a series of town halls. The designs offer the town an increased infrastructure for refuge and social events but centered around making the areas safer from a fire perspective.

The researchers will continue working with the community to secure grants and work with local California architects and landscape architects on the design and building of the sites.

“I think we have a role as designers to work with fire in its many forms, and to work with prescribed fire in a way that benefits communities and offers health, refuge, and ecological recovery.” said Manley. “These communities are not giving up, and we shouldn’t either.”

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McDaniel frequently saw gourds, fiber arts, and taxidermy while traveling through the Blue Ridge region and visiting��local museums, heritage sites, and collections. She saw the artifacts as a way people of the region curate themselves and reveal a forward-thinking outlook rooted in the past. The exhibition is a part of her��ongoing research affiliated with the Rural Urbanism grants awarded by the College of Architecture and Design.

“There is a lot that we can learn from the region to impact the larger public,” said McDaniel. “It is important for rural dialogues within a university context to be more public. The visibility of an exhibition allows more people to engage. This work asks its audience to reconsider the rural a source of knowledge.”

McDaniel, who grew up on a farm in rural North Carolina, focuses on representation of the Southeast because of the region’s nuances, contradiction, and lingering trauma. Through her work, McDaniel aims to explore, unfold, and exhibit the complexity of the southern landscape.

“Rethinking rural artifacts as strategies has allowed me to reconnect to memories and processes, I witnessed as a child. Through this work I have been able to unravel and advocate for rural logics.”

Rural Ways is on exhibition through August.

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