Project Title: “Osisi Obodo” Community Tree (Igbo)

Project Location: Weeksville Heritage Center; Weeksvile, Brooklyn, NY

Project Client: Weeksville Heritage Center

Date: 2026 - Present

Role: Project Architect / Artist

Collaborators:

Ximena Diaz Velasco (CUA Community Designer); Jennifer Weiss (CUA Research/Engagement Volunteer); Tylin (Structural Engineer); Kingsborough Houses Resident Association; BEAM Center (Fabricators)

About:

The Weeksville Heritage Center Community Shade Structure is a collaborative design-build project that introduces a modular shade system to one of Brooklyn's most significant cultural heritage sites. Conceived as both functional infrastructure and an act of community stewardship, the structure provides shade, seating, and flexible gathering space to support Weeksville's expanding programming and welcome visitors to the historic grounds. The design responds to the center's legacy as a place of Black self-determination, offering a contemporary architectural gesture rooted in that enduring spirit of collective care.

Central to the project is a participatory design and construction process engaging youth from the neighboring Kingsborough Houses public housing community, led in partnership with the Beam Center. Young people are not simply beneficiaries of the finished space but active collaborators in its conception and making, gaining hands-on skills in design thinking, fabrication, and construction. The project operates at the intersection of heritage preservation, youth development, and spatial justice — creating a lasting physical asset for Weeksville while investing in the creative capacity of the next generation of community builders.

Project Location: Flatbush African Burial Ground; Brooklyn, New York

Client: GrowHouse Design + Development Group , Urban Design Forum

Partners: Design Team:Immanuel Oni (Liminal - Design Renderings), Deena Darby (Project Management), Kami Beckford (Graphic Design),

Date: 2023-2024

Role: Designer / Engagement Strategist

About:

Creative Urban Alchemy was selected as the project lead for the Urban Design Forum Local Design Center RFP to support and partner with GrowHouse Design and Development Group to develop a community driven approach to public art, and memorialization at the Flatbush African Burial Ground and an activation plan for a Black History + Heritage Corridor connecting historic sites of Black Brooklyn.

The design of the Dikenga Pavillion combines Central African cosmology and West African symbology into a form that celebrates and creates space for community rest and ritual gathering. The gabion enclosure presents an opportunity for participatory art, youth skill building and a community crafted gravestone that carries on a life of its own.

Community Engagement Session

Youth Engagement Session

Design Process

Design Team

More information on the Local Center Initiative

Project Title: Ecologies of Memory

Project Location: Van Cortlandt Park African Burial Ground

Project Client: Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, VCP African Burial Ground Legacy Council

Date: 2026 - Present

Role: Project Designer / Artist

Collaborators:: Rodney Leon Architects and Mphatic Design

About: Ecologies of Memory is a speculative landscape framework for Van Cortlandt Park that reimagines wetlands, pathways, meadows, and gathering spaces as interconnected sites of healing, remembrance, and ecological renewal. Drawing from African diasporic cosmologies, Indigenous ecological knowledge, and the layered histories of the Bronx landscape, the project transforms overlooked areas of the park into ceremonial and community-centered environments rooted in stewardship and collective care. At the center of the proposal is the reactivation of the historic mill basin through the Bakongo Dikenga cosmogram, creating a circular civic landscape for gathering, reflection, performance, and seasonal ritual through integrated seating, sculptural wayfinding, immersive planting, and low-light atmospheric interventions.

Across the broader park landscape, woodland trails, wetland boardwalks, memorial walls, and open meadows become spaces for storytelling, ecological education, and cultural programming. Sculptural elements inspired by the Congolese Lukasa memory board serve as tactile markers of orientation and memory, while a native planting strategy informed by African American and Lenape ecological traditions restores habitat and reinforces spiritual, medicinal, and cultural relationships to the land. Ecologies of Memory positions public landscape as both environmental infrastructure and living archive—where restoration, ritual, and community gathering become inseparable from the future of urban public space.

Project Location: Madison, Wisconsin

Client: BT Farms Foundation Inc

Project Team: Design / Planning Team: Jima Studio (Landscape Planning), Burse Engineering (Civil), Stephen Glass & Mrill Ingram (The Restoration Ecology Lab-Restoration Ecologist), ARG Design (Regenerative Planning Strategy), KI Strategies (Climate Resilience & Community Engagement), Farmer D (Agriculture Planning)

CUA Team: Kami Beckford (graphic illustration ), Marcus Wilford  (massing studies )

Size: 235 acres

Date: 2022 - 2024

Studio Role: Prime Consultant: Programming, Design Guidelines, Form Based Codes, Community Engagement Strategy

About:

BT Farms is developing a regenerative community plan for approximately 230 acres of farmland in Madison, Wisconsin. Inspired by emerging trends of cooperative urban farming, this intentional community will center equity, justice and intergenerational wealth building and support Black and Indigenous communities to thrive, as foundational principles.

The community vision plan includes:

• Restoration of approx 100 acres of existing wetlands and natural hydrological systems

• Integration of approx 50 acres of farmland with land conservation areas

• A 10 acre network of parks and open spaces

• 404 units of diverse forms of mixed income, sustainable and affordable housing (supportive, cooperative, single and multifamily),

• Approximately 5 acres of space for training and educational development

• Approximately 5 acres of space for amenities to support a rich entrepreneurial and quality living environment.

Check out these articles in the Wisconsin State Journal on the project and team!

One-of-a-kind 'agri-hood' would blend housing, farming and racial justice on Far East Side of Madison

Meet the team that wants to bring an agri-community to Madison

New BT Farms agri-community project on Madison’s East Side will support local agriculture and healthy communities

Link to drone footage of the site

Project Location: New Jersey

Client: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection

Partners: Agency Landscape + Planning; NV5; Hive Public Space

CUA Team: Jeana Fletcher (graphic illustration )

Date: 2023 - 2024

Role: Equitable Design + Planning consulting: engagement strategy, cultural equity and regenerative design/planning strategy

About:

The Greenway is a nine-mile corridor that connects eight municipalities. The NJDEP is conducting a planning process to understand how the Greenway can effectively support the diverse communities that surround it.

Creative Urban Alchemy joined a multidisciplinary team to facilitate engagement, co-develop a phased recommendations plan for the development of stormwater management infrastructure and Design Plan of the New Jersey Greenway. The work will result in a planning document that will serve as a guide for future planning and will include the options for and prioritization of high-impact projects. It will illustrate how community input was used to develop and shape the greenway’s ideas and priorities.

Project Location: Annapolis, Maryland

Client: City of Annapolis

Date: 2024 - 2025

Partners: McAdams, SCAPE, MBP, Underwood and Associates, Synergy Solutions

CUA Team: Remy Chong (community designer )

Role: Arts & Culture Planning, Public Space Design

About:

The City of Annapolis, in partnership with the Resilience Authority of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County, has selected McAdams and SCAPE to create a Master Plan for Carr’s Elktonia Heritage Park. They will lead a team that includes MBP, Creative Urban Alchemy, Underwood and Associates and Synergy Solutions.

Under the Master Plan, the five-acre site will become a new park designed to acknowledge and celebrate Chesapeake Bay’s historic Black beaches. The work will involve landscape design as well as shoreline restoration to protect the new park and its beach from the impacts of climate change.

Once one of the few Black-owned beaches during the Jim Crow era, Carr's and Sparrow Beaches offered Black families a safe place to gather, relax and enjoy performances that shaped music history. Today, this new plan honors that legacy through public art, cultural storytelling, gathering spaces and shoreline restoration, ensuring the park remains a place where everyone belongs.

Project Title: Uncovering an Invisible City.

Project Location: Civic Center, New York City

Date: 2002

Role: Project Designer

About:

2002 Bachelor of Architecture Thesis: Cornell University School of Architecture

Winner of the Cornell University Department of Architecture Charles Goodwin Sand Bronze Medal for Design Excellence

Published in the Summer 2001 - Fall 2002 Edition of the Cornell University Department of Architecture WORKS

In my investigations of hidden architectural landscapes I questioned whether design has the ability to do the reverse: reveal the hidden. Can architecture symbolically reveal the hidden history of African Americans and the hidden conditions in the Manhattan landscape? I created architecture through the process of revelation. Through an understanding of the design tools used to create invisibility I used architectural tools that had the ability to reveal the connection/ transition between the visible (underground) and invisible (history) boundaries of the Manhattan landscape.

Project Location: Union City, Georgia

Client: Union City Mayors Office / Mayors’ Institute on City Design

Partners: Design/Planning Team: Brie Hensold (Agency Landscape + Planning) ; James G. Stockard, Jr (Housing Development)

Date: 2021

Role: Design / Urban Strategist

About:

As a part of their Alumni Technical Assistance program The Mayors’ Institute on City Design connected our team of city design experts with leadership at the Mayors’ Office of Union City to advance projects striving for greater equity, opportunity, safety, and well-being for Union City.

Raymond Drive in Union City, a growing Latin X community just southwest of Atlanta, is experiencing challenges and issues of community safety, trust in government, health inequity and affordable housing. The work aimed at reclaiming, renewing, and reimagining Raymond Drive and Raymond Terrace as an active, safe, and welcoming neighborhood. Strategies featured included alternative uses of utility easements, placemaking opportunities in the public realm, options for increasing home ownership and the creation of community engagement forums.

Check out the final report here

Article in Next City Online Publication: “here”

Project Location: Los Angles, California

Client: City of Los Angeles Mayors Office

Design Team: Lindsey Wikstrom, Ujiji Davis, Galen Pardee, Mustafa Hasan Khan, Angela Sun

Date: 2020

Role: Design Strategist: Developed concept narrative, design approach and housing design strategies

About:

Community Health + Engagement

Our approach is a durable neighborhood strategy that includes a network of 50 units across multiple sites, each with a two story fourplex, community storefront and onsite parking for both, to maximize the economies of scale and knit the community together. This approach addresses health equity by providing for the needs expressed in the listening sessions – spaces for youth engagement, food security, childcare, education, and entrepreneurship within a 15 minute walk.

We envision a cooperative model facilitated by a community land trust to target issues of displacement, community safety and lack of collective ownership. The community storefront in each fourplex provides a common space for services and small business growth. Feedback through a digital interface can link the CLT and residents more readily, allowing for continuous resident participation in decision-making towards thoughtful future programming strategies.

Low Rise LA Design Competition Website

Link to FULL proposal

Project Location: Jacksonville, Florida

Client: Jessie Ball duPont Fund; City of Jacksonville

Size: 75 acres of publicly-owned downtown riverfront land

Cost: $100M (proposed implementation budget)

Partners: DVDL; WXY Architecture + Urban Design; JLP +D; Groundwork Jacksonville; Riverfront Parks Now

Date: 2021

Role: Community Engaged Design / Public Space Activation Strategist

About:

Collaborated with a notable team exploring the future potential of the Jacksonville Downtown Riverfront as an inclusive place where every resident feels they belong. The Activation Plan is focused on bringing people and energy to the Downtown Riverfront and providing opportunities for diverse groups from around the city. The Plan offers a framework for activities, programs and experiences, design interventions to enhance the Riverfront experience, activate underutilized spaces, and, most importantly, provide the facilities needed to program spaces along the Riverwalk on a daily basis.

Supported the local community engagement partner to create and implement public space activation and participatory design strategies as a part of the community engagement process.

View Full Report

Project Location: New York, NY

Client: New Yorker Magazine

Partners:

Claire Weisz and David Vega-Barachowitz, WXY

Jonathan Marvel, Guido Hartray, Yadiel Rivera-Díaz, and Chit Yee Ng, Marvel

Janette Sadik-Khan, Bloomberg Associates

Brandt Knapp and Jerome Haferd, Brandt : Haferd

Victor Body-Lawson, BLA Architects & Planners

Peter Slatin, Slatin Group

Photograph and rendering by Nightnurse Images Inc.

Date: 2021

Role: Urban Strategist

About:

Collaborated with a notable team of designers and strategists on crafting an achievable, replicable, and speculative plan for a city that’s embracing public space as never before. This streetscape plan was integrated into an article in New Yorker Magazine written by Justin Davidson.

See full article on Perfecting the New York Street

Project Location: New York City (citywide)

Client: Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice; NYC Economic Development Corporation

Partners: WXY, Buro Happold, Hester Street, Lion Advisors, U-Hope Consulting, Lida Aljabar (KI Strategies)

Date: 2022 - Present

Role: EJ Study Community Engagement Consulting, EJ Study Report Development, Environmental Justice Plan Advisor

About:

The City of New York has embarked on an effort to comprehensively study environmental justice in the five boroughs. The study aims to better understand how and where people face disproportionate exposure to environmental burdens and climate risks, and how the City has alleviated or worsened these burdens and disparities. This assessment will set the foundation for a future Environmental Justice Plan that integrates environmental justice into City decision-making and identifies new City environmental justice initiatives.

More information on the EJNYC Study

More information and to download the Environmental Justice Report

Project Location: Durban, South Africa

Client: Zimisele Home Based Care Association

Date: 2009 -2010

Role: Project Designer

About:

The Zimisele Home Based Care Center is located in the Umlazi Township 10 miles southwest from the Durban City Center in the Kwa Zulu Natal Province of South Africa. Through an engaged design process with diverse community groups a series of values were established as the foundational design principles for a community center for the administration of home based care services and provision of youth engagement programming.

The objectives of the Zimisele Home Based Care Center design were to:

1] Provide spaces for the administration of community health services and support programs for young people in the community.

2] Integrate best practice in sustainable design to encourage the use of renewable energy and limit environmental impact.

3] Celebrate the local cultural aesthetic and lifestyle through building and site design.

4] Develop a package to support organizational fundraising efforts for community programs and the construction of their future center.

Relevant Links

Project research published in NOMA Magazine Spring 2010 Issue

2009 Design Research Blog on Community Health Centers in South Africa

Project Location: Indiana Avenue , Indianapolis, Indiana

Client: Department of Metropolitan Development (DMD)

Date: 2023 - 2024

Partners: Elizabeth Kennedy Landscape Architect (EKLA), WXY Architecture + Urban Design, Candace Jackson Arts Management, Rhodes Heritage Group, Indy Equity Collaborative, Indiana Strategic Resource Group

Role: Racial Equity Planning, Urban Design Strategy

About:

DMD selected our consultant team to facilitate and create an equitable re-development plan for Indiana Avenue in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. Such a plan reflects DMD and the community partners desire to highlight Indiana Avenue’s history as a thriving mixed-use African American commercial and cultural district and align it with future development along the corridor. This effort coincides with the DMD’s Cultural Equity Plan effort that will, among other goals, incorporate culture, history, and equity into its decisions, processes, and programs. The plan will accomplish its goals using a people-centered and equitable approach.