Tough Sites: Designing for Hard Histories

Join Elizabeth J Kennedy, RLA FASLA, landscape architect and Design Trust for Public Space Research Fellow, as she explores the challenges of designing “tough sites,” locations steeped in culturally charged and contested histories. Kennedy will focus on her ongoing projects, including the Inwood Sacred Site in northern Manhattan. The site, a former African burial ground on land originally taken from the Lenni Lenape, represents complex narratives of displacement and cultural heritage. She will discuss how contemporary design and conservation can honor these overlapping histories, addressing the challenges of spatial reclamation and the responsibilities of designers working within arcs of social justice.

Following her lecture, Kennedy will be joined in conversation with cultural consultant Peggy King Jorde and architect Rodney Leon, collaborators on the African Burial Ground National Monument.

Presented in partnership with Garden and Landscape Studies – Dumbarton Oaks, the program invites a deeper engagement with issues of place, memory, and identity through thoughtful landscape architecture.

About Elizabeth J Kennedy, RLA FASLA

Kennedy is a Design Trust for Public Space Research Fellow and the 2022 recipient of the Landscape Architecture Foundation Medal. She heads EKLA, which she founded in 1994 to challenge mainstream assumptions about the aspirations and needs of underrepresented voices and engage a broader, critical understanding of place and identity.

About Peggy King Jorde

Peggy King Jorde is a Cultural Projects Consultant combining more than 30 years of experience in planning, design, public art, and historic preservation projects in New York City and beyond. King Jorde served under three NYC mayors, providing oversight to capital construction projects specific to New York’s cultural landmarks, public art, and art museums.

About Rodney Leon, AIA, NOMA

Rodney Leon is the architect of the African Burial Ground Memorial in New York City. His practice focuses on modern “Culturally Contextual” design, Master Planning and Mixed Use Housing Development for faith based and international development organizations.

This program has applied for 1 HSW LA CES (ASLA)

Program Schedule:
Doors Open at 6:00
Program Starts at 6:30pm
Reception from 7:30-8pm

Photo courtesy Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architect, PLLC

Equity in the Built Environment is supported by the American Society of Landscape Architects, the American Institute of Architects, Arup, and STUDIOS Architecture.