The 8-acre EcoCommons at Georgia Institute of Technology is an ecologically and socially driven educational space that highlights native ecologies and daylights the site’s nearly forgotten Civil Rights history. Artfully connected by universally accessible paths, the EcoCommons spans three primary zones: the learning deck accommodates outdoor classes and stormwater capture while providing habitat and air quality monitoring; the play area offers views to the surrounding campus and provides gathering areas equipped with adult-sized slides and hammocks; and The Contemplative Site provides space for reflection and reminds us of the momentous Civil Rights events that happened on this very site.
The newly opened EcoCommons at Georgia Institute of Technology is the largest standalone landscape project ever undertaken by the university. The project’s concept began as a solution to the need identified in the 2004 Campus Landscape Master Plan for a series of interconnected open landscapes. In addition to creating new amenities for the campus community to gather, relax, and study, the Institute wanted to ensure these landscapes were ecologically functioning to support sustainability initiatives, improve stormwater management, reduce runoff, and provide new opportunities for on-site research. Now, the eight-acre EcoCommons is an ecologically and socially conscious pedagogical space, presenting native regional ecologies and daylighting the site’s difficult and nearly forgotten Civil Rights history.
The design process for the EcoCommons was fundamentally collaborative across many scales — from charrettes with students, faculty, and staff to consistent collaboration with the Institute’s Capital Planning, Space Management and Facilities Design and Construction departments to holistic approaches to landscape with ecologists, engineers, historians, and local experts.
At the outset of conceptual design, the Landscape Architect and design team facilitated multi-day workshops with students and faculty. It was here that it became clear that the project must embody the community’s fundamental desires for water stewardship, engage social connection, amplify native Piedmont ecologies, and be honest to Georgia Tech’s past. These generated additional key principles that guided the vision and foundation for the final EcoCommons design. Along with these, the 2004 Master Plan created a design that manifests three primary project goals: Learn, Engage, Reflect. EcoCommons is the core of this series of open spaces, reintegrating functional topography and water flow and creating three living landscape typologies that meet each of these goals.
EcoCommons meets the Institute’s goals of reducing stormwater runoff, diverting millions of gallons from entering the city’s sewer system, and capturing it for irrigation. The high-functioning landscape supports Georgia Tech’s commitment to sustainability and provides research opportunities for students and faculty through ongoing environmental monitoring.
The EcoCommons also provides abundant spaces for its community, including a learning deck for outdoor classes, a hammock grove, slides to traverse the site’s topography, and lush native plantings for immersive experiences of nature. The Georgia Tech community is Engaged within this accessible landscape for active and passive recreation, increased connectivity, and relaxation.
Finally, the EcoCommons responds to and engages the public in a significant moment in Civil Rights history. The site is the former location of the Pickrick Restaurant — an all-white establishment that refused service to three Black students from a local seminary, an incident which led to the first lawsuit upheld by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Unity Plaza celebrates the agency and bravery of these students and invites the public to reflect on this legacy and its importance today. Unity Plaza invites the community to Reflect on the site’s significant Civil Rights history.
Through stormwater capture and reuse, habitat and air quality monitoring, outdoor instruction areas, study, and gathering, and a contemplative site for social justice, the design creates opportunities for learning, research, engagement, and reflection for students, faculty, and visitors. EcoCommons demonstrates Georgia Tech’s bold aspirations for its campus: an accessible and connective landscape that integrates ecological performance with rich educational, recreational, and interpretive opportunities.
Other landscape architecture offices involved in the design of landscape: Barge Design Solutions
Architecture offices involved in the design: Lake|Flato
Location: 879 Hemphill Ave NW, Atlanta GA 30318, USA
Design year: 2018
Year Completed: 2021
