The historic Brooklyn Cemetery was established in Athens, GA to serve the city's growing African American community. In recent years, it had been abandoned until the Friends of the Brooklyn Cemetery began seeking resources to restore the overgrown burial grounds and rebuild ties in the community it once served. 

Professor Melcher's studio of MLA students first engaged with the Friends of the Brooklyn Cemetery in 2012 to produce a master management plan that they have been working off of for the last eight years. In Fall 2020, a new collaborative effort between the Brooklyn Cemetery and the Engagement Studio/Community Landscape Lab was established to collect community input on detailed design elements. The student design team consisted of four graduate students: Shihui Deng, David Evans, Aron Hall, and Adedamola Okunmadewa. Throughout the course of the semester, these students led a series of engagement activities that directed the design of Brooklyn Cemetery in a way that will connect the surrounding community with its history. 

To read about the design process, visit the project blog here. 

Kate's Club is a non-profit in Atlanta, GA that aims to empower children who have experienced the loss of a parent or sibling through advocacy, recreational group support programs, engagement, and education. The club believes in the power of a healing community to overcome that grief. 

The collaborative effort between Kate’s Club and the Engagement Studio/Community Landscape Lab sought to achieve a healing landscape design for the club through community participation. The student design team consisted of three graduate students: Emily Whisenant, Joshua Goeden, and Pranisha Karmacharya. These students, in cooordination with Kate's Club worked towards a vision of providing interactive outdoor space so that the club’s members can be outside as much as possible when they are at the club house, and also to encourage children to touch, smell and experience the natural world that empowers their curiosity. 

To read about the design process, visit the project blog here.