Through studio and service organizations, I have found passion in urban planning projects, client relationships, and public-interest design. In the future, I aspire to explore the field of preservation design and better understand the methods of active preservation and reuse of buildings. I hope to obtain licensure within the next few years and expand my horizons in architecture and design experiences. elizabeth ott university of tennessee, knoxville college of architecture + design
EDUCATION
LEADERSHIP POSITIONS
University of Tennessee, Knoxville College of Architecture and Design Bachelor of Architecture, Class of 2019 | 3.74 gpa
National Freedom By Design Advisory Council Chair 2018-2019
Tadeusz Kościuszko University of Technology
Krakow, Poland | Exchange Student | Spring 2018
EXPERIENCE Student Intern | Lyle Cook Martin Architects Brad Martin III, principal | part-time employment from December 2015 to present Teaching Assistant | University of Tennessee College of Architecture + Design Marleen Davis | Fall Semester 2017 + 2018 Brian Ambroziak | Spring Semester 2019
Freedom By Design Knoxville Chapter Director 20172019 Alpha Rho Chi Treasurer 2018-2019 American Institute of Architecture Students First Year Representative 2014-2015 Alpha Rho Chi Philanthropy Chair 2015-2017 Freedom By Design Secretary 2015-2016 Freedom By Design Fundraising Chair 2016-2017 Tau Sigma Delta Secretary 2017-2018 Tau Sigma Delta Member since 2017 American Institute of Architecture Students Member 20142019
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
AWARDS + HONORS
volunteer at AIAS Forum December 2014 hosted by Knoxville AIAS chapter in Nashville
UTK Normandy Scholars Program Spring 2019 - Summer 2019 One of fifteen selected from the University to study the memory of World War II with associated travel to selected sites of memory impact from the War, including London, Normandy, Paris and Amsterdam.
helped form the Alpha Rho Chi Theodorus Chapter process began February 2015 installed February 2016 Installed as the Charter Class in February 2016. Prior to completion, this consisted of designing events and identifying what our impact to our college can be; I focused my efforts in understanding our philanthropic mission in Knoxville. student ambassador for College of Architecture + Design Represents the College of Architecture + Design by leading tours of the school and answering questions for prospective students. AIAS Grassroots July 2017 + 2018 in Washington D.C. National leadership conference hosted for leaders in AIAS.
AIA Middle Tennessee Awards | Fall 2017 Integrations team selected to present in a competition within our college, sponsored and judged by members of AIA Middle Tennessee. EUReCA Spring 2017 | Honorable Mention EUReCA is a research competition between students across the University of Tennessee. Students may compete within their discipline, as well as university-wide topics. I presented research regarding disaster relief and remediating the traumatism that is associated with devastations of natural disasters.
DESIGN
CATALOGUE
01 Charleston Capitol Campus
02 Relief Barges 03 Cloud
02 Experience 03 Making
RESEARCH
STUDY ABROAD
01 Skeletor
01 Transgressive Urbanism
02 Relief Barge 03 Canova Museo
DESIGN 01 Charleston Capitol Campus 02 Relief Barges 03 Cloud
01 Charleston Town Center led by Thomas K. Davis in collaboration with Shanese Brown
The city of Charleston, WV and local firm, Sillings Architecture, sought out our college for student design input in regards to a dying mall that is located central to the downtown. Our plan of attack in regards to representing the mall and revitalizing the capital is to start with a clean slate and redesign the site. We acknowledged the original footprint of the Town Center by retaining the spine of the mall and the existing avenues in the building, such as the edges of the corner buildings. The first move is to develop a mature streetscape with pleasant walking paths connecting key public spaces. The second move would be to create public spaces such as the proposed Capital Park, amplified riverfront, urban courtyards, and eroded edges. These spaces are meant to be programmed for proposed festibals and events for the city such as bike and foot races, holiday bazaars, flea markets, music festvals, and movies in the park. The third move is to populate the empty lots wiht mass buildings to create an urban environment along the river edge and the civic center. This campus would be populated by way of an extension of the existing University of Charleston or a satellite campus for West Virginia University or similar institutions. Various types of housing will exist on the upper floors to generate types of communities that populate the site at different times of the day. In addition, the ground floor will be mixed use, not only left to the university but maybe having amenities for the residents there.
HOUSING DISTRICTS
HOUSIN
NEIGHBORHOODS
RIVER AND STREAMS
NEIGHB
TOPOGRAPHY
BUILDING + GREEN SPACE
CHARLESTON
RIVER A
Analysis: [Above] Programmatic axon [Left] Axon of Charleston
02 Relief Barges
led by Tracy Moir-McClean Honorable Mention at the EUReCA Research Competition 2016 saw many disasters: Hurricane Matthew in the Caribbean and southern United States, wildfires in the east and west, and severe snowstorms in the north. Upon further research of disaster response, especially in flood-related issues, I found that many survivors did not completely recover until years later, both on a financial and emotional state. I then proposed to attack how we change our approach and methods of helping families in disaster areas and counteracting post-traumatic stress syndrome but also bettering those who are affected, the majority being in the low-income demographic. As a response, the Sisters of the Ursuline Relief Mission was canonized. In a unit of three barges, Sisters will man the barges and respond to distress calls, traveling up and down the Mississippi River and down their tributaries. The Coast Guard comes in beforehand, establishing the residential pontoon bridge network system that connects to the barge units, which forms the community center for the survivors. This community center would evolve for the purpose that is seen fit, capable of housing the Sisters, providing recreational space, place for worship, and educational areas, among other things. Essentially, this is an approach of implementing long-term assistance and rehabilitation when the traumatism of the natural disaster has fully affected the landscape and the people.
SCALE: 1/
03 Cloud
led by James Rose in collaboration with Shanese Brown + Subu Bhandari submitted and presented in the AIA Middle Tennessee Awards We were charged with the opportunity to design a research campus on the banks of the Tennessee River and in proximity to the University of Tennessee, downtown Knoxville, and UT Medical Center. Our client was Cisco, an international company centered on developing network security and software products. We decided to incorporate a system of staircases that would have a significant color to give the site and company an identity to Knoxville. The building is veiled to the public by a custom perforated metal facade that generates public and private spaces similar to the way Cisco acts as a network server. We achieved LEED Silver with this project and designed this building to be long-life loose fit, in hopes that it would be occupied beyond Cisco’s term.
STUDY ABROAD 01 Skeletor 02 Experience 03 Making
01 Skeletor
led by Bartek Hominski and Krzysztof Bojanowski For nearly forty years, a tower of structure has stood unfinished in Cracow, Poland, earning it the nickname of Skeletor. We were charged with cladding the structure, developing a program for the tower and site, and creating an urban plan for the tower. In looking for inspiration, I noticed how Krakow is one of many cities in Europe that has poor air quality due to the surrounding industrial plants. As a result, the tower could act as a physical air filter tower. The facade would be composed of panels that trapped bad particles, thus the facade would transform from transparent to opaque as a visual representation of what the Cracovians are breathing. Those inhabiting the Skeletor whether it be work related or staying a night in the hotel would be able to experience the space between the facade and the wall of the Skeletor, actively seeing the work of the facade as a shared cigarette’s smoke is trapped in the louvers. In regards to the urban plan, I wished to create a context that would create environments that both students from the campus to the left of the Skeletor and families that live to the right of the Skeletor to join in the various plazas and parks, but also intermingle in mixed use buildings below the Skeletor. The site is also in proximity to a major transportation hub and historic downtown Cracow so I addressed the nolli plan of the historic grid with application to my own site. Furthermore, the site will continue its sustainable efforts as represented by the Skeletor and generate a new image for Cracow as one of conscious sustainable efforts.
educational space]
[typical upper floor plan - office]
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ground floor plan]
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educational space]
[typical upper floor plan - office]
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02 EXPERIENCE My education at the University of Tennessee has allowed me to pursue a better understanding of visual representation. For the past nine years, I have been working with the manual settings of photography and perfecting the camera eye and framing an experience. I got the opportunity to follow this passion even more so whilst abroad and tested the methods I’ve learned with my newfound time and chances. Travel allowed me to not only experience powerful places of architecture but also challenge myself to capture the taste and feeling of an environment in a photograph. The collection of photos shown are to express that I have been to various sites of importance, and has really expanded my knowledge and mind in the architectural hemisphere.
03 MAKING Krakow allowed for exploration in handcraft through sculpture. Our professors pushed us to explore the movement and geometries that clay can express. We used shapes to forumulate space and begin to articulate body movement from the sculpture. From there, we developed investigations into carving. This emphasized shadow, depth, and spatial design.
RESEARCH 01 Relief Barges 02 Canova Museo 03 Transgressive Urbanism
01 RELIEF BARGES
led by Tracy Moir-McClean Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Hermine were creating chaos for the residents in Louisiana all the way northeast to New York. The weather and damage was so intense that many colleges, institutions, and the like postponed work and school. Most people receive assistance for two months at most, that those affected are majority in the lower income demographic, and the majority population affected by Hurricane Katrina have not recovered since. This inspired me to research the methods of those who actively respond to disaster situations, such as the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I started noticing that of these places there would need to be a temporary campsite, or one that could respond to growth, but needed to be designed with practicality. I was interested in a sustainable form of this construction and more thoughtful design of temporary housing, therefore I looked to Shigeru Ban as an example of environmentally-friendly materials designed in a method that is capable of simple construction. From there, I studied product design such as shipping containers, pontoon bridges, the Makoko Floating School, and Emergency Flooring for a sense of how this environment might look. My research topics started formulating into programmatic design, informing me that I should have a solution that is mobile and easy to construct, capable of short or long term installation, and accommodating to the conditions at hand of serving large or small crowds, having an ability to expand and contract and adapt to serve the flux. Barges were presented as a site option and I jumped at the chance, imagining an immaculate group of women facing the depths of nature’s worse temper in the name of faith and fellowship and fellow souls in danger.
We began our programming & design process with a “spark”, to initiate an open investigation in what we are interested in, thus influencing our final products. “Beat Box” were the words charged to us, from which I determined “heartbeat” as a major avenue of study and defining the characteristics of the product I wished to create. I gravitated to an investigation of the power of the hand and its relationship to objects and its influence on hands and people and thus, programming. From here on, the hand became a symbol I returned to time and time again.
shower | bath water closet lavatory
blackwater waste composted and disinfected
catchments
kitchen sinks [meat, various chemicals, etc.]
medical sinks
kitchen sinks [fruit & vegetable]
drinking fountains
graywater waste filtered and recycled
baptismal
Material Studies: These included types of weaving, such as with plastic bags, found natural materials, and perforated surfaces.
Programmatic Studies: Investigations of programmatic interaction and the modularity of the shipping containers.
02 Canova Museo
Led by Katherine Ambroziak In collaboration with Shanese Brown An early investigation of a historic museum that was added onto by architect Carlo Scarpa. We studied the relationship of the sculptures to the size of the space they are placed in. We found there was significance in the positioning of the sculputure, where the sculpture is looking, and if the sculpture is reclined or standing or a bust. All of these qualities move the audience through the space and our study exemplifies how the user experiences shifts in relationship to the pieces and how light reveals special elements of the artwork.
Spatial Study: Volumetric comparison between the original museum and addition.
reclining glass displays standing sitting bust
Experience Studies: [Above] comparing audience position to space and sculpture [Left] relationship of sculpture’s eyes
03 TRANSGRESSIVE URBANISM
led by Jennifer Akerman and Julie Beckman As a conclusion to my education, I pursued Self-Directed Studio led by Jennifer Akerman and assisted by Marshall Prado and Julie Beckman. My investigations were ignited by criminal activities, especially burglary and complicated heists. At its heart, the qualities that are architectural include spatial misappropriation, optical illusion, and surveillance. The fall 2018 semester was spent researching about these topics, concluding that my spring research would lead into investigations of latent space and produce a space curated specifically for the programs that take advantage of said space. The intent of this study is to document and expose a database of latency typologies within an urban fabric by means of investigating elements of spatial misappropriation, surveillance, camouflage, and perception by way of the criminal lens.
Warping Perspective: Study of how a drawing style can warp planes and perspectives, especially applied to the city block.
Studies in Detection and Visibility: [Above] The “Invisible Route” in Antwerp [Left] “dazzle architecture”
Embedded Programs Studies: Understanding the implications of an embedded program within the Statue of Liberty through ambiguous drawing.
Criminal Story Boarding: The following pages depict a study of criminal activities in the cinematic perspective to understand spatial misappropriation
[Above] burglary / team / church [Left] con / solitary / casino
[Above] trafficking / team / apartment [Left] con / solitary / airport
THANK YOU