LEAP Collaborative: A Demonstration of Sustainable Practices

Located on in the heart of downtown Knoxville along West Church Avenue, the LEAP Collaborative is imagined as a collection of landscape architects, engineers, architects, and planners who contract projects with an emphasis on sustainable design. Therefore, for the design of their headquarters, we wanted to express that commitment to sustainable design and display some of those practices clearly to the pedestrian and passer-by. One of the main goals was the clarity of programmatic pieces. The retail comes out to the street edge to invite shoppers. The laboratory, highly visible, pushes forward towards the street edge but is less accessible to the public by being raised up on pilotis. The multiple terraces are connected through the use of plantings that even move vertically along walls to connect plaza to upper roof terraces. The use of planting was important to bringing habitats and greenery back to an asphalt parking lot site in the middle of the city.