DCP students present sustainable design and agricultural urbanism ideas on East Alachua County
2012
DCP graduate student James Cody Baldwin held a captive audience.
A group that included conservationists, educators, business owners and local citizens listened intently as the architecture major explained how the cinema complex he envisioned and designed would be powered by piezoelectric technology.
Baldwin, who is completing his final year of study at the college, explained that simply walking into a theatre to see a movie would create electricity for the venue.
Baldwin’s concept is one of many innovative design ideas he and his classmates developed using sustainable design and agricultural urbanism for a real-life place – Plum Creek’s 17,000 acres of land in east Alachua County, Fla.
The students’ presentations were the culmination of an academic exercise coordinated by Martin Gold, director of the School of Architecture, Mary Padua, associate professor of landscape architecture, Pierce Jones, Extension Program leader at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, and Kathleen Ruppert, extension scientist at the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering in partnership with Plum Creek, the largest and most geographically diverse private landowner in the nation with approximately 6.7 million acres of timberlands in the United States. Under the direction of these instructors, the students spent a semester designing a vision of how Plum Creek might conserve and develop its lands near Gainesville. “The students were asked to research and design strategies to integrate local food into a master planned community development, but they did a lot more than that – they came up with land conservation strategies, unique potential commerce and community features, water and solar alternatives,” said Todd Powell, senior director of real estate for Plum Creek’s Florida properties. “They pushed the boundaries and came up with some very innovative ideas that I think everyone in Alachua County will want to see.”