The region’s extractive economy has shifted from geology to identity, from land to image. Tourism reframes identity and ecology as consumable experiences.
The Extraction of Appalachia, specifically East Tennessee traces the relationships between environmental systems, extractive industries, tourism economies, infrastructure and cultural practices. Rather than treating the landscape as a neutral backdrop, the diagram frames territory as an assemblage produced through overlapping human and non-human actors. By collapsing spatial, economic and ecological data, the diagram reveals how regional identity is continuously negotiated. It resists definitive boundaries, instead proposing East Tennessee as a contingent and evolving system, one whose architectural futures must be understood through relationships.
This work was completed as a Graduate Research Assistant under Prof. Micah Rutenburg for “Mycoregional Futures”.