'Wall-Less Mart' Concept transforms box stores into alternative community centers Heather Beck - Thu, Feb, 2, 2012
This conceptual drawing of the “Wall-Less Mart” project shows a vacant big box store transformed into a community, featuring re-used building structures, green space and alternative energy sources. - Illustration Submitted
A lecturer from The University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design is encouraging communities to think outside the box — the big box, that is.
“The amazing thing about the big box is what is implied by its nickname: it is a massive free plan space where almost anything can happen,” UT lecturer Matt Hall said.
Hall and a few colleagues, including Shane Elliott, Nathan Matteson and Chris Melander, among others, designed a conceptual idea called “Wall-Less Mart,” for a 2008 competition dealing with sustainability issues.
The “Wall-Less Mart” takes a new look
at vacant big box stores and transforms them into an entire community. The big box is stripped of its walls; now only a canopy, it holds community program space, offices and even recreation areas. - read more -
Olivia Davis, HVA senior in Hope Brashear’s advanced art class (red shirt), applies adhesive to a ceramic tile while classmates and professional studio artist Bailey Earith (on ladder) work on the mosaic. - Alan Sloan/farragutpress
The imagery within Hardin Valley Academy’s new 110-square foot ceramic tile mosaic, under construction on a wall below the stairway facing the schools’ main entrance, has had students buzzing with anticipation.
“What’s really been surprising to me is the response of other students watching this be built in front of them, a little bit each day. … Trying to guess what it’s going to be,” said HVA advanced art teacher Hope Brashear, whose class of nine is using a “modern” concept.
With some outside professional help.
While it has “several shades of blues,” tying into HVA’s school colors of navy blue and powder blue, the mosaic has “black, burgundy, white, all sorts of things going on,” said Bailey Earith, Farragut “full-time studio artist” for hire and expert in tile art — with her fiber art displayed in a handful of locations nationwide — who is leading the project. - read more -
Xrista Christopoulos spray paints art on recipient's bedroom wall. - Photo submitted
Meeting eighth-grader Xrista Christopoulos made a lasting impression on Sallee Reynolds, as the Hardin Valley Academy principal recalled four years later.
However, it’s a pair of lasting impressions made upon Christopoulos, now a senior at HVA, that led her on the path toward fulfilling bedroom “makeover” wishes for critically ill area teenagers.
Inspired by volunteer work with a similar cause, “Special Spaces,” and working alongside roughly 60 HVA Student Government Association members, SGA advisor Tim Lee and her father, Christos Christopoulos (owner of Christopoulos & Kennedy Construction), Xrista founded Project Rooms of Hope in early 2010.
With hundreds of hours volunteering in East Tennessee Children’s Hospital Summer Volunteer Program the past “four or five years,” Xrista, 17, said she “spent numerous hours in the oncology and hematology clinic. Many of the families in the clinic were not only dealing with children suffering from cancer and undergoing treatment, but also facing financial hardships as a result of medical expenses. - read more -
From left are Ashley Hughey, Shana Kay, and Hughey’s son, Jackson, 8; husband, Roger, and daughter, Brooke Stowell, 16. - Photo submitted
Ministering at a home for orphaned and abused children in Montego Bay, Jamaica, last April, Ashley Hughey broke down some thick emotional barriers built by a withdrawn teenager she worked alongside in a kitchen.
In the process, Hughey, husband, Roger, and their six children decided to redefine Christian outreach as members of Farragut Community Baptist Church.
They are in the process of adopting Shana Kay, the oldest child at the Jamaican home there at that time, 15, who caught Hughey’s eye during seven days at this home named Robin’s Nest.
“The very last day she wrote me a letter,” Hughey said of Shana Kay’s “request list” of items including, “‘A dress that I could wear to church … I’d like a new pair of shoes’ that she doesn’t have to share.”
“‘But more than anything, if you really want to know what I truly want and will always want, I just want a mom and a dad,’” Hughey added about Shana Kay’s letter. “I basically lost it.” - read more -
• First Baptist Concord has opened registration for students to attend Disciple Now 2012, to be held March 2-4 for students in grades 6-12. Cost is $59. Register in the student office at the church or online, www.fbconcord.org/
• Church Women United will meet at 10 a.m., Friday Feb. 3, at First Christian Church, 211 W. Fifth Ave. in Knoxville. Theme is “Embracing human rights,” and speaker will be Theresa Venable, discussing her work as head librarian at Alex Haley Farm. For more information, call Linda Worden at 865-573-8176.
• Knoxville Day Women’s Aglow Lighthouse will hold an outreach meeting from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., Tuesday, Feb. 7, at New Covenant Fellowship Church, 6828 Central Ave. Pike. Speaker is Vickey Rockwood, vice president of finances and public relations of Aglow East Tennessee Area Team. Topic is “the spiritual heart.” Everyone is welcome; childcare is provided. For more information, call Diane Shelby at 865-687-3687.
• Christ Covenant Church will host “Questioning Aslan — A Night with C.S. Lewis,” presented by Searchlight Theater Company from England at 7 p.m., Friday, Feb. 10. Tickets are free and can be picked up at Christ Covenant, 12915 Kingston Pike. For more information, visit www.christcov.org/ - read more -
