05/26/2026
What started as a prototype assembled outside the Storrs building ended up at a seven-acre urban regenerative farm in west Charlotte, the result of a vital community partnership and the work of 65 UNC Charlotte students and two faculty. Here's how it came together 🌱
Assistant Professor of Architecture Kyle Spence had been carrying the pieces of the EcoDome with him since before he moved to Charlotte, with a vision of using it for some kind of agricultural landscape project. When he met Wisdom and Cherie Jzar, founders of Deep Roots CPS Farm, at the Uptown Farmer's Market, that vision finally had a home.
Funded by a Gambrell Faculty Fellowship through the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, "Roots of Change" brought together 45 architecture and urban design students across three semesters to develop, refine, and build the vertical planter at Deep Roots. After assembling the prototype on campus, students re-engineered the structure for strength and expanded it to fit the farm's mission, testing it again on campus before installing it at the farm, with mentorship from Neighboring Concepts.
The planter boxes went through their own process. Spence reached out to Professor Lydia Thompson, who assigned the project to her ceramics class. 20 students turned lumps of clay into the custom vessels now lining the EcoDome's shelves.
Students also designed laser-cut story panels, a living archive covering the history of farming in Mecklenburg County, the Catawba River Basin, and the family tree of Deep Roots itself. At the ribbon cutting, students presented research posters on urbanization, agricultural decline and food access.
Today the EcoDome greets visitors at the entrance to the farm, growing herbs and edible flowers while serving as signage, gathering space and a prompt for conversation. As Cherie Jzar put it, the 18-month "Roots of Change" collaboration was "a wonderful journey," that created "a space of learning, a space of connecting, a space of telling the story about Deep Roots."
Read the full story at https://inside.charlotte.edu/featured-stories/cultivating-community/
