Energize

Among political scientists and energy systems scholars, there is widespread agreement that the first domino that must fall on the path to a decarbonized planet is the total decarbonization of the American electrical grid. This is due to a variety of factors, including the role the U.S. plays in technology transfers around the world, the sheer scale and power of utilities and grid operators in the U.S., and the necessity of the world’s wealthiest and, at least historically, highest carbon-emitting nation to take on a leadership role through public investments in clean energy.

This collection of projects illustrates a variety of ways that designers are thinking differently about the deployment of renewable energy generation, transmission, and storage across the American landscape.

Back to Curated Projects

Landscapes of Excess: An Approach to the Spatial Dynamics of the Offshore Wind Industry
Coastal Massachusetts

Focusing on the friction between offshore wind farms and their reciprocal coastal landscapes, this project looks at three sites: a marine commerce terminal in New Bedford, the Brayton Point Commerce Center in Somerset, and an offshore wind farm. Framing the project by the excesses that emerge from their interactions, including excessive material, vulnerability to sea-level-rise, and energy production, this project aims to soften the edges of such large-scale engineering.

Author: Barbara Graeff
Institution: Harvard Graduate School of Design
Instructors: Sergio Lopez-Pineiro, Studio Coordinator Danielle Choi

Disarming Carbon
Coastal Massachusetts

Through looking at the General Aviation Manufacturing Facilities and offshore natural gas terminal, this project challenges the ideology that current modes of industrial production are unchangeable and inevitable. Through linking the two sites (one onshore and one offshore) and stripping the hard edge of the GE Plant, this project aims to envision better futures of renewable energy, carbon sequestration, and coastal adaptation within the existing infrastructural footprints of large-scale manufacturing.

Authors: Jeb Polstein
Institution: Harvard Graduate School of Design
Instructor: Danielle Choi

The Public Power Coalition
St. Louis, MO

Working towards the creation of more equitable funding systems for the St. Louis Public School district, this project aims to situate green banks along a federally funded corridor of solar infrastructure, connecting local elementary schools and offsetting energy costs to schools and adjacent properties. This new kind of green infrastructure physically and financially connects to local schools, becoming both physical and social anchors within communities, stabilizing property and community networks.

Author: Meredith Busch
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Instructor: Patty Heyda

Rethinking Infrastructure: Synthesizing a development model from the regional grid to a local hub to usher in clean energy systems
St. Louis, MO

Building on emerging regional energy landscapes projects like the Grain Belt Express, this project is an approach towards unlocking distant renewable resources for communities spanning rural-to-urban settings. Aiming to create sustainable jobs, ecologies, and upgrades to existing infrastructure, the project focuses specifically on a site in St. Louis with a history of heavy industrial use and at the convergence of an urban and floodplain ecosystem, calling for its transition into a transmission-conversion hub.

Author: Tyler DeMassa
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Instructor: Patty Heyda

Reacting to the seeming dysfunction of the existing energy system, this project calls for a de-commodification of energy through publicly controlled energy production. Much like Rural Electrical Cooperatives, this proposal would work with federal grants to create small local power grids, which would have a role in redesigning neighborhoods. Titled the Neighborhood Energy Authority, the program would create inexpensive local renewable energy systems and new public spaces that benefit existing residents.

Author: Andy Entis
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Instructor: Patty Heyda

Beginning with an examination of the economic forces surrounding the development of wind turbines, this project proposes a collaboration between two towns, constructing a renewable energy sector and corresponding design framework with housing, education, and workspace. The towns, chosen based on similar conditions of vacancy, wind speed, and poverty rates, will grow and benefit as two different parts of the wind-sector supply chain - manufacturing, in Kinloch, MO and wind development, in Kirksville, MO.

Author: Dillon Pinholster
Institution: Washington University in St. Louis
Instructor: Patty Heyda

Situated on a disturbed, abandoned surface mine, this project calls for the production of bioenergy while prioritizing ecological and economic sustainability. Through processes like phytoremediation, erosion control, runoff filtration, carbon sequestration and biodiversity restoration, the proposal includes four types of existing conditions: prairies species, woodland species, forest species, and riparian buffer species. These landscape typologies will each perform different ecological services, producing energy while repairing the existing site.

Author: Mengying Li
Institution: Washington University St. Louis
Instructor: L. Iréne Compadre

Responding to the joint crises of rising energy rates and rising costs of living in Los Angeles County, this proposal calls for the establishment of cheap and reliable energy for low-income communities. As the energy equity gap grows, propelled by old housing infrastructure and rental precarity, it will become necessary to utilize existing public spaces, such as disused gas stations, to become the centers of the local green economy.

Authors: Jimmy Ta, Kevin Slawson
Firm: EDGE Design Group