BRIANNA BARTELT
This is a figure ground drawing of downtown Nashville, TN. The name Nashville goes back to the late 1700s, when colonists established Fort Nashborough where the modern-day city is located now. Later, Nashborough was
changed to Nashville in 1784. Cut through by Commerce Street, this area is populated with everything from offices to music venues. The circle covers the AT&T building (formerly the Bell South building) a mixed-use building.
The highlighted building sits on 2.7 acres of
private property on Commerce St between 3rd and 4th Avenues North, and has a
footprint of 1 2⁄3 city blocks. It is a large mixed-use structure
comprised of three inter-connected buildings with shared external courtyards. The
structure sits diagnally on the city block with a thirty-three-story street wall and no
cut-throughs. It is currently undergoing major renovations and is closed to the public.
This drawing shows key characteristics
of the city block between Commerce Street, 3rd, and 4th Avenues including hard landscaping (road, pedestrian walkway) and soft
landscaping (green space, gardens, green roof) creating a typical
streetscape. Vehicular circulation traverses streets,
some one-way. Street walls are shown aligning across building façades of
adjacent blocks, creating a continuous visual boundary. Each
intersection has crosswalk lines and bollards on curbs.
This Actor-Network map traces the history of the Nashville streetscape as well as the actors and processes that shaped the downtown area. The legacy of Commerce Street continues to this day with most structures flanking the street being office buildings. The gridded street network increased the mobility of people and commercial transactions with goods arriving from the Cumberland River to the east. The materiality associated with 20th century Nashville was imported. Technological advancements of the time allowed for massive walls of fiberoptics. Currently, the development group who owns the AT&T building is gearing up to implement major renovations to the structure, spurred by increasing tourism.
This image shows an alternative set of
activities including an outdoor food market, a critical local history tour, and
a more ethnically diverse set of pedestrians. Other details such as the
addition of more lighting create a warmer and more festive atmosphere. This
reimagining of the space transforms the hyper-commercialized landscape of the AT&T
Plaza into a more inviting scene populated with non-white persons engaged in
leisure and didactic activities. Taking the findings of the Actor-network map
into consideration, this vision of the AT&T Plaza is not line with the developer’s
current efforts to revitalize the block. The current development efforts in
Nashville seek to only attract more white tourists and transplants who are increasing
rents and pushing locals farther out of town.