Reframing the Plantation Narrative: A Community-driven Evolution of Latta Place - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/HSW)

Recorded On: 10/09/2024

Latta Place is a historic house and plantation, formerly a home to enslaved people and currently a heritage site within the Mecklenburg County, NC, park system. We will explore the community-driven process to restore the site and recenter its dominant narrative. Lessons for working on complex sites will be shared.

Learning objectives:

Understand processes for inventorying, analyzing, and assessing landmarked sites, including historical research, digital scans, and more.
Learn about new tactics for community engagement related to complex historic sites and how feedback gathered can inform design.
Explore representation and storytelling techniques used to present and collectively evaluate potential futures.
Walk away with more knowledge about how sites with painful pasts can be acknowledged and addressed by landscape architects.

Gina Ford, FASLA

Principal and Co-Founder

Agency Landscape + Planning

Focused on making the public realm more equitable and just, Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) is a non-profit design and community development organization that works in disinvested places around the world, collaborating with communities that have been excluded, harmed, or marginalized by traditional design.

Kofi Boone, FASLA

Professor

NC State University

Kofi Boone, FASLA is a professor of landscape architecture and environmental planning at NC State University. His work is in the overlap between landscape architecture and environmental justice with specializations in democratic design and interpreting cultural landscapes. He leads the Just Communities Lab. Along with M. Elen Deming, Kofi is co-editor of Empty Pedestals: Countering Confederate Narratives Through Public Design, forthcoming from LSU Press.

Darneka Waters, ASLA

Planner

Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation

Darneka Waters is a Park Planner for Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation, responsible for capital planning and development coordination, public engagement, and master plan implementation for parks, greenways, nature preserves, and more. As an emerging professional and alumna of NC State University, she is known for her participation in industry and community-based organizations. Currently, she is a Black Landscape Architects Network (BlackLAN) Board member and regularly volunteers within the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). Before joining Mecklenburg County, Waters worked on numerous urban design and planning projects as a Landscape Designer at an interdisciplinary firm in Charlotte, NC.