The Lone Oaks Farm Cabin
When I visited The Lone Oaks Farm in Middleton,TN, I felt strongly connected with the landscape and nature the farm contained, and I was drawn into the natural world that’s missing from our daily life. As we blindly progress into a technologically innovated lifestyle, we are slowly forgetting our essential concept for survival. This concept is simply that we need to farm in order to eat. It is necessary for us,the human race, to learn how farming and nature is essential to our society. The 4H Youth Development Organization are preparing to spread that concept to the future by modifying The Lone Oaks Farm into a 4H Camp.
In fall semester of 2013, as an fifth-year undergraduate in the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Architecture and Design, I was challenged by my professors, Robert French and Theodore Shelton, to design an Inn for 4H Conference Center which function as a retreat for visitors who wish to escape the concrete jungle of city living. I was also challenged to use green oak as the material for its low energy-input and sustainability. Green oak is freshly cut oak that contains excessive amount of moisture. Evaporation of the moisture causes the wood to shrink.
I decided to design individual cabins instead of an inn to provide prime outdoor experience to visitors. Each cabin is designed to include green oak structural members that are harvested on-site, collects energy from the ground and the sun, collects and filters rainwater into drinkable water, and compost waste to be returned to the earth.
The third-year architecture students are engaged in a studio using these 4H cabins as prototypes and are to modify the design to accomplish what I could not in six weeks. I am hoping that the third years will learn detail assembly of materials and graphic presentations with this 4H cabin project. I am also excited to see the modifications and transformations that are going to be made.
submitted by Sherif Sugiyama