The University of Kentucky President's Sustainability Advisory Committee announce UK Sustainability Challenge Grant Winners. Assistant Professor Martin Summers received a grant in collaboration with Michael Wilson of the UK Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) to investigiate the potential for sustainable bus shelters on the University of Kentucky campus. The project titled "Point of Departure," consists of a cross-disciplinary team of faculty, campus stakeholders, campus master planners and students exploring issues of identity, networks, grid-tied solar, enhanced user expereince and leverage design thinking to demonstrate applied research happening at the university as well as to engage the community through interactive education about sustainability and design.
Project Description:
This project began as a simple idea: Develop sustainable bus shelters on the University of Kentucky campus as a means to explore ideas of architecture, engineering, sustainability and interdisciplinary collaboration. While these goals are at the heart of the research, it is clear that to see it within these limited terms represents a huge missed opportunity. This is our Point of Departure.
We need to reimagine the urban scale of campus through strategic acupuncture; a series of interactive, networked, didactic, and iconic structures, each bringing a unique identity to the spaces and sites where they are located. The structure and site link to the ongoing campus and transportation master planning concepts where programmed green space, sustainable design, and enhanced user experience create destinations and event spaces for students that are not often associated with a bus shelter. Each shelter is designed to maximize the opportunities latent at each site and to outwardly express this integrated identity to students, visitors and to the city of Lexington.
The announcement was featured on the UK/CoD website.