Manhattan Redux

Objectives: The University of Kentucky Center for Applied Energy Research proposed two charges or provocations. The first was for the studio to apply architectural modeling, spatial and simulation capabilities to produce a visualization of the scope and form of the plume of contaminants residing in the aquifer deep below the Paducah site. This information should be developed with the aim of fabricating a model of conditions below the site in work beyond the studio. The second provocation was laid down by the CAER’s director, Rodney Andrews, who said that no proposal could be deemed successful unless it addressed the employment and economic conditions resulting from the PGDP’s imminent closure. These objectives came on top of the necessary rigors of any graduate architectural design studio, which include design, complex spatial and formal problem solving, strategy, considerations of environmental impacts, project management, leadership, etc.

Outcomes: The studio produced a series of hundred to five hundred year timelines that proposed a method for evolving the plant site from historically dirty and dangerous operations toward cleaner and safer operations. The timelines not only looked at site operations and environmental conditions, but proposed an evolution of the region’s economy from uranium enrichment toward clean energy production and ultimately the research, development and export of remediation technologies. The studio also produced imagery from spreadsheets, or derived a form from what had previously been described as data-points, that describes the extents and shape of a plume of groundwater contaminants located below the plant. This information would be used to develop the first of several interactive models produced by the Atomic Cities Research Group.