Energy infrastructure facilitates modern occupation of buildings – with electricity comes the ability to heat and cool spaces for comfort, to keep food refrigerated, and to complete tasks safely after the sun has set. However, in times of changing climates and increasing natural disasters, electrical access is not guaranteed in many contexts; when the power is out following a severe weather event, the spaces of daily life are compromised, no longer safe and functional in the ways they are with electricity.

In the mountain town of Adjuntas, Puerto Rico, homes and businesses were left without power for up to a year following Hurricane Maria in 2017. Following this disaster and the subsequent recovery process, the local community organization Casa Pueblo realized the need for energy independence and developed a microgrid that unites the buildings around Adjuntas Square to power local businesses, including the pizzeria. While the aesthetics and spatial qualities of Lucy’s Pizza remain largely unchanged by this intervention, the power grid enhances the ability to occupy the restaurant. In this way, architecture has been made more versatile and more resilient through an infrastructural project that has unified the community.

The example that is the Adjuntas Plaza microgrid and how it has allowed ordinary architectures like that of Lucy’s Pizza to adapt is local in its realization, spearheaded by a homegrown institution and responding to specific problems faced in the context. However, there are lessons that can be extrapolated and applied to vulnerable communities. How can existing architectures be made more adaptable through relatively simple infrastructural systems and technologies? How can sustainable infrastructure unite a community? This paper, utilizing site visits, documentation, and interviews with participants in the Adjuntas microgrid project, will analyze the project and discuss how places in a community can be made more resilient through energy infrastructure.

This paper presents an open source framework that converts block level travel demand outputs into building level electric vehicle charging load profiles through a three stage stochastic simulation process. The workflow connects activity based travel behavior, temperature adjusted trip energy estimation, and probabilistic charging dynamics to generate hyperlocal EV load profiles tailored to different building types.

We describe this workflow as a technology of place. It is locally calibrated using city specific mobility patterns, building stock data, and charging infrastructure, while remaining transferable to other urban contexts. A case study in the City of Ithaca demonstrates the framework’s ability to reproduce realistic daily charging patterns across activity categories and to reveal significant spatial and behavioral variation in EV demand.

Using Ithaca as a testbed, we evaluate three scenarios. The first represents present conditions, with approximately one percent EV adoption and existing charging infrastructure. The second projects a ten year scenario with twenty percent adoption and thirty additional charging locations. The third models a 2050 future with eighty percent adoption and a mix of Level 2 and DC fast chargers. Scenario based load intensity maps show how neighborhood scale infrastructure decisions can either concentrate or redistribute charging demand across the city.

Clustering analysis identifies representative daily load profiles that can be integrated into Urban Building Energy Modeling workflows. By explicitly linking travel behavior, spatial context, and charging dynamics, the framework provides a stronger basis for evaluating building and district scale energy performance under transportation electrification. The open source release supports transparency, replication, and adaptation by researchers and practitioners seeking to translate local design and policy interventions into broader energy planning insights.

Puerto Rico’s fragile energy landscape is marked by fossil fuel dependency, climate vulnerability, and infrastructural inequities that present a critical opportunity for place-based transformation. The interdisciplinary graduate landscape architecture studio, Energy Landscapes: Puerto Rico, examined how landscape architecture can guide a transition to renewable energy systems that are not only technically viable but culturally and ecologically grounded.

Focusing on Puerto Rico’s southern coast, the studio investigated the spatial legacies of extractive industry, including the decommissioned Aguirre power plant and the remnants of the sugarcane economy. These post-industrial territories were reimagined as generative landscapes capable of supporting decentralized, community-based energy systems. Students developed design strategies that integrated solar energy production with habitat restoration, public space, food systems, and civic infrastructure.

The pedagogical framework emphasized systems thinking and multi-scalar design, linking energy infrastructure to the social, ecological, and material realities of local communities. Studio activities included site visits, stakeholder engagement, expert lectures, and the use of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as an evaluative framework. Students engaged the island’s energy challenges through community-based research, spatial analysis, digital modeling, and speculative design.

Proposals explored agrivoltaics, landscape-based carbon strategies, adaptive reuse, and participatory planning. Emphasizing resilience and flexibility, the projects envisioned energy landscapes as living systems in which technical performance is inseparable from cultural meaning and ecological health that serve educational, social, and environmental purposes.

Informed by research from organizations such as Cambio, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), the studio addressed tensions between centralized grid models and the island’s growing movement toward distributed, community-owned energy.

By situating renewable energy within a broader landscape narrative, the studio demonstrates how design can reshape energy infrastructure as a catalyst for ecological repair, cultural memory, and community resilience.