P3 Grant Award Winners

As you may or may not have heard, we are now the proud recipients of the EPA P3 Phase 2 grant! The whole team is brimming with excitement over our victory and cannot wait to see where the project takes us next! Not only did we win the Phase 2 grant, we took home a Student's Choice award; our fellow exhibitors voted and agreed we were worthy of taking home the prize! We are deeply honored and just want to say that every single booth that participated in the exposition did a knock-out job creating projects that benefitted People, Prosperity, and the Planet! We are all winners when it comes to improving the quality of life for everyone. One of the most exciting parts of the exposition was getting to talk to the students of different universities and share similar research stories and talk about what worked and what did not. All in all, we had an extremely successful semester and an invaluable exposition. Thank you to everyone involved at the EPA, the USA Science and Engineering festival, and everyone who proposed a project. Who knows, the next time we all meet up we may have built a Green Oak House! 

EPA P3 Expo

We have been judged completely and could not be more excited! We are still explaining our exhibit to the public and to returning judges! We love talking about Green Oak and educating everyone about the sustainability of this building material! Check our twitter for updates on our progress! @UTGreenOak 

Exposition Day

It is time. We have constructed the exibhit, hung drawings, placed models, tweaked our presentation and are ready for the judges! As excitement builds, crowds gather to talk about our G.O. House! 

Packed Up!

We are all packed and ready to hit the road for DC! Our bents and wall section mock-up fit in one van with the floor; all of our pallets and podium are in the other.  Deconstruction only took a few hours with labeling and sorting the bolts and screws. DC here we come! 

So Close!

We have all of our exhibit material ready to build! 

Our bents are up and we are planning out our boards and presentation. 

Creating space to inhabit, our exhibit will showcase our projects intent. We chose green oak to build the bents so the public can see, feel, and experience our material up close and personal. 

Green Oak as Sculpture?

Meanwhile.. We have art!  Well, what we are calling our "Green Oak Research Sculpture".  Students are working with the Tennessee Center for Renewable Carbon and the UT Arboretum to develop this portion of our materials research.  We have 15 pallets nine feet above ground that are subjects to measure dimensional movement, durability, and weathering qualities ( such as change in appearance).  Students will monitor this project with photographic documentation once a month for the next 3 years to develop conclusions that can be applied to our future design/build/evaluate project.

FabLab Progress Report

Excited about getting some build time in the Fab Lab, the team plans out a strategy for assembly. Pieces of pallets and green oak everywhere, we saw and screw the different pieces together to make a frame. It stands. The team glows as we have one more part of the exhibit put together! 

We can definitely see our exhibit in the space with all of our other competitors and are ready to crush the competition!