ATAM: DRONE GARDEN
Drone Delivery Garden Located in the Old City Region of Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville, TN
Mixed-Use Retail
2022
Software Used: Rhino 7, Adobe Creative Cloud, V-Ray, Enscape
The Robot Garden in Knoxville’s Old City reimagines urban sustainability by integrating advanced robotics with architectural design to address food accessibility and community engagement. Situated within a parking lot, the project combines delivery robots and vertical gardens into a self-sustaining ecosystem that serves both local residents and the broader city. A central, bean-shaped tower houses automated systems that cultivate, harvest, and distribute produce, while drones and robots extend delivery networks beyond the University of Tennessee campus, reducing food deserts and promoting equitable access. Glass-enclosed vertical gardens provide both functional and visual interest, and hybrid mapping of drone pathways demonstrates seamless integration with the surrounding urban fabric. Public engagement is prioritized through garden spaces, interactive observation of robotic systems, and accessible circulation.
Taking inspiration from the poems of the Divine Comedy written by Dante Aligheri, the shape of the structure is in the form of a spiral with the center piece being where the robots work in and exit out of. Other small biblical themes are seen here as a swapped dynamic of acquiring and growing food that is instead colllaborated with robot technology instead of humans in the Garden of Eden, thus the nomenclature of the whole project.
