Internal Drift

This was a group project, centered around the Tennessee River. As one of my landscape studios, this project was broken down into several phases prior to completing the work seen here. This whole studio operated together with the Tennessee RiverLine, a project focused on developing the river and its surrounding communities. The overall goal is to one day turn it into an interconnected trail system. The project has several websites and social media accounts if you want to learn more about it.  

I had the privilege of working with the project several times throughout my time at grad school, though this class and project was my initial introduction. To start off, we first focused on learning more about National Parks and trail systems. Anyone who has listened to my podcast knows I am an avid hiker and enthusiast about national parks, so this was right up my alley.

After that, we toured the Tennessee Watershed for a week, following the river and exploring some of the communities surrounding it. After finishing the tour, we broke off into teams, each assigned to one of the communities we toured, and then each team would further break up the landscape and design projects that both worked together with the others on the team, but also brought the community to the water, and the travelers on the water to the community.   My section of the landscape had the highest elevation but closest proximity to the town. While I technically had river access, it was from a former train bridge over the water, connecting the extremely steep embankment of the town to the island on the other side of the river. There was no beach, other than on the then privately owned island. My proposal was broken up into four stages, starting with purchasing the rights to the island, to allow for direct water access, or if that was unachievable, utilizing technology similar to ski lifts or elevators to minimize the damage to the landscape, and allow for direct access to the water, without having to go several miles downstream to the dock.  

Then I created a series of gardens, connecting the town to the water, and providing social programming, and points of interest along the way. At the time, the bridge, town, and river were largely detached from each other. Each beautiful points of interest, but largely independent of each other. So, bringing the community and river together was a key concept I was addressing. By the end of the project, the goal was to complement an already rich and vibrant culture and show another side they had to be proud of. I have included a few boards and select pieces of the finished project, as well as an enlarged copy of the garden design, inspired by the rich local history.