People

• BA Sociology, Vassar College
• MLA, Louisiana State University
• PhD Candidate, Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts

My work jumps between philosophical investigations and in-the-dirt applications, in hopes of discovering ways in which design can enrich and improve people’s everyday lives. Landscapes provide a literal common ground for fostering connection and change. Design can serve as a means for engaging people with this common ground and with each other in open-ended, on-going explorations and celebrations. I aim to develop methods where professional designers can work with people to create places of delight and mystery, humor and pathos, and complexity and richness. Key terms: landscape architecture theory, aesthetics, environmental ethics, participatory design, social benefits of landscape architecture, community development through design, phenomenology, qualitative research methods

• Castro Professorship, University of Georgia, College of Environment and Design, 2024.
• Service-Learning Teaching Excellence Award, University of Georgia, 2022.
• Outstanding Paper Award, Council for Educators in Landscape Architecture, 2018.
• Grant awardee, National Endowment for the Arts, Research: Art Works, FY 2012.

• Aesthetic Confessions: Questioning Taste in Landscape Architecture

• Melcher, Katherine “Building collective know-how: a case for more procedural knowledge in landscape architecture.” Landscape Review. 2023. https://journals.lincoln.ac.nz/index.php/lr/article/view/1211
• “Aesthetic intent in landscape architecture: the particularity of beauty, meaning, and experience,” Landscape Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, 2022.
• Melcher, Katherine “Making public space more ‘common’.” New Geographies 12: Commons, 2021.
• “Viewpoint: In praise of social distance in public spaces,” Town Planning Review, 2020, published online ahead of print.
• “Valuing the discipline: refrains and riffs,” Landscape Review, vol. 18, no. 2, 2019, pp. 5-15.
• “Three moments in aesthetic discourse: from natural law to phenomenal richness,” Landscape Research Record. Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture conference proceedings, no. 7, 2018, pp. 70-81.
• Melcher, Katherine; Barry Stiefel, and Kristin Faurest, eds. Community-Built: Art, Construction, Preservation, and Place. Routledge’s Community Development Research and Practice Series, 2017.
• “Many Voices, One Project: Participation and Aesthetics in Community-Built Practices,” The Plan Journal, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2016.
• “Healing Community Through Play: The Design and Construction of the Moo Ban Nua Playground,” in The Architecture of Change: Building a Better World, Jerilou Hammet and Maggie Wrigley, eds. University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque, NM, 2016, pp. 255-264.
• “Equity, Empowerment, or Participation? Prioritizing Goals in Community Design,” Landscape Journal, spring 2014, pp. 167-182.