Our Work

Studio Appalachia is a partnership between university faculty and community leadership, aligning design capacity with local expertise to address the region’s pressing challenges and emerging opportunities. 

Our work is anchored by a commitment to mutual benefit between the University and community, where local knowledge and resources are appropriately valued, resulting in a co-creative community partnership that challenges the power dynamics of typical client-expert relationships.

We seek to advance the region towards a more sustainable future through partnerships within communities, academic institutions, organizations, and agencies. Through these partnerships, we share our outcomes to inform and influence design, policy, and impacts across Appalachia.  

The work is organized into the following Initiatives:

  • Climate Resilience through Community Resilience

  • Global x Appalachia

  • Troublesome Creeks

The work of Studio Appalachia has been presented at numerous conferences and venues, nationally and internationally.

Climate Resilience through Community Resilience

In 2021, Studio Appalachia launched Climate Resilience through Community Resilience, a multi-year engagement between the University of Kentucky and civic leadership in Hazard, located approximately two-hours away.

Challenging the traditional expert-client relationship, the initiative aligns local expertise, community leadership, and design capacity to address both historical disinvestment and the compounding effects of climate change in the region through sustained engagement and participatory design.

In Fall 2021, graduate students assessed three community assets, each an underutilized but promising building or space in downtown Hazard. The graduate design studio in Spring 2022 undertook a robust visioning of sustainable economic-develop opportunities in both downtown as well as on reclaimed mine sites surrounding the city. The following spring, students revisited the site of the former Grand Hotel to offer in-fill development concepts.

Each set of student projects was informed by multiple site visits, community-engagement activities, and ongoing exchanges with community leadership. The projects represent a collaboration between UK and our community partners—each bringing an area of expertise necessary for imagining and imaging a resilient and thriving future for the region.

Read More About the Work

Climate Resilience through Community Resilience: A Model for Engaged Design from Coal Country (ACSA Annual Meeting 2024)

Rural Resilience in Appalachia (ACSA Intersections Conference 2022)

Organizers

  • Baylen Campbell, Invest Appalachia

  • Jeff Fugate, University of Kentucky

  • Rebekah Radtke, University of Kentucky

  • Brent Sturlaugson, Morgan State University

Collaborators

  • Tim Deaton, Appalachian Arts Alliance

  • Hannah DeWhirst, University of Kentucky

  • Stacie Fugate, City of Hazard

  • Ren Little, Appalachian Arts Alliance

  • Bailey Richards, City of Hazard

  • Les Roll, Mountain Association

  • Lora Smith, Appalachian Big Ideas Festival

Funders

  • Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky - LIFT Fund

  • National Endowment for the Arts - Our Town Program

  • Southeastern Conference

  • Tracy Farmer Institute for Sustainability and the Environment

  • UK Center for Clinical and Translational Science

  • UK Center for the Environment

Global x Appalachia

We are reimagining Appalachian climate futures by cultivating communities sharing place-based design solutions and best practices. We share work co-created with community partners and academia to inform perception of place, cultural competency, public policy through a global community of practice.

Challenging the traditional expert-client relationship, the initiative aligns local expertise, community leadership, and design capacity to address both historical disinvestment and the compounding effects of climate change in the region through sustained engagement and participatory design.

Global x Appalachia seeks to elevate the University of Kentucky as a research leader in design solutions for sustainable societal, ecological, and climatic futures, specifically in the context of an energy transition landscape. In its early stages, Global x Appalachia builds on existing robust international partnerships at the University of Kentucky and existing research activity regarding Appalachia, ecology, cultural landscapes, housing, and community development. At the outset, we anticipate the following areas of inquiry and activity: 

  • Community-centric co-design processes. (methods)

  • Design and policy in support of climate-responsive communities. (applications)

  • Partnership development and research collaborations in global post-mining and post-industrial territories. (impacts)

To address global challenges that directly impact Kentucky, this initiative supports an interdisciplinary, community-engaged research project in Appalachia within the context of international partnerships.

Read More About the Work

Chaire Post-Minier Board of Directors (Chaire Post-Minier)

Emerging Themes 2024 Cohort (UK Research)

Organizers

  • Rebekah Radtke, University of Kentucky

  • Jeff Fugate, University of Kentucky 

  • Baylen Campbell, Invest Appalachia

Collaborators

  • Margarita Dekina, Post-Mining Territories Network

  • Georges-Henry Laffont, National School of Architecture of Saint-Etienne

  • Dr. Ann Kingsolver, University of Kentucky Appalachian Center

  • Béatrice Mariolle, École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture et de Paysage de Lille

Funders

  • UK Office of the Vice President for Research

Troublesome Creeks

Troublesome Creeks: An Atlas of Appalachia in the Anthropocene documents established and emerging relationships with water affecting small towns and cities in Central Appalachia through representations of tangible phenomena.

Troublesome Creeks consists of a series of maps, photographs, essays, and data visualizations that document environmental and infrastructural features through the frame of water. The project will unfold through a series of topical investigations that take shape in the form of public exhibitions, academic outlets, and community forums, ultimately culminating in a published volume.

This research illustrates both the historical and contemporary landscape of adaptive uses, settlement patterns, and resilience strategies intertwined with economic transition and societal change. The atlas serves as a visual index of these tangible elements as a way of promoting broader accessibility to underlying intangible elements while encouraging further design thinking at urban and architectural scales.

In addition to public education, the project serves as foundational research for Studio Appalachia, an ongoing multidisciplinary design studio collaborating with communities to co-design more equitable and resilient environments. Now facing the fifth of what has been four tumultuous decades, the region is experiencing significant transition, which has the potential for creating a more environmentally sensitive and socio-economically just future.

Read More About the Work

Troublesome Creeks: An Atlas of Appalachia in the Anthropocene (The Research-Design Interface, ARCC 2023)

Principal Investigators

  • Jeff Fugate, University of Kentucky 

  • Brent Sturlaugson, Morgan State University