All of the Above
Janette Komoda Kim
My work addresses climate justice by empowering communities to realize a more equitable distribution of land and resources. To address such complex issues, I often collaborate with community-based organizations and municipal agencies, and I combine tools of urban, architectural, and multimedia design.
Over the years, I’ve been drawn to approaches that I believe get to the roots of systemic change. One—decision-making tools—deals with the process of community empowerment. The other—property reform—shapes the space of community life.
My decision-making tools help community members explore, imagine, and debate potential responses to complex urban issues in a healthy, playful way. For example, I designed three board games, called In It Together, Bartertown, and Mix & Match, which play out more just and equitable responses to wildfires and rising seas. I also wrote a book called The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform, which exposes the politics behind sustainable design, and I co-produced a podcast series called Safari, which gives subway riders a tour of urban animal life just outside their windows. I reflect on such methods by writing about public engagement. I advocate for more direct, collaborative governance by those who are most impacted by design.
I also reimagine the space of property ownership. My goal is to foster regenerative economies and a more reciprocal relationship between people and land. In the Resilient by Design Challenge, for example, our team designed collectively-owned housing to protect communities from displacement due to sea level rise and gentrification. I also designed a hotel in Sichuan, China and a farmhouse in Sonoma, CA, where people can engage with bamboo and chapparal landscapes around them. I also research and write about exceptional community-based initiatives. I am currently writing a book called Property Playbook, which illustrates how activists and architects can co-opt property ownership to foster ecological vitality and repair the dispossession of land from workers and BIPOC people.
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BioJanette Kim is associate professor with tenure at the Architecture Division at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where she co-directs the Urban Works Agency research lab. She is also founding director of the architectural design practice All of the Above.
Before joining CCA in 2016, Janette was also assistant professor at Syracuse University and adjunct assistant professor for ten years at Columbia University, where she co-directed the Urban Landscape Lab. She previously worked for Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Laura Kurgan Design, and Maya Lin Studio. Janette holds a Masters of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University.
Janette is a second generation Korean-Japanese-American and grew up in Los Angeles.
Janette’s work has been praised as “indispensable” for framing “design as a form of political action.” It has been celebrated by former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for envisioniong a “vibrant, equitable economy.”
Janette has worked in partnership with municipal agencies such as the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, Oakland City Planning, Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York, and the City of Newark; and non-profit activists such as the East Oakland Collective, Oakland Climate Action Coalition, Repaired Nations, Dellums Institute for Social Justice, and the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. She is also a member and investor-owner at the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative.
Janette’s work has been awarded by the Graham Foundation, the Architectural League Emerging Voices prize, AIA San Francisco, and the Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship, and has been featured in NPR’s ‘Brian Lehrer Show,’ Artforum, Architect, Frame, GOOD, and the feature-length documentary, The Grove. Janette’s work has been exhibited at YBCA; the Oslo Architecture Trienniale; in subway systems in New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Sao Paulo; a private house in Levittown, NY; and galleries including Artists Space, Eyebeam and the Storefront for Art and Architecture.
Note: this website combines all of Janette’s work in one place,and therefore includes work she created in her role as co-director of the Urban Works Agency and as an independent scholar. All affiliations and authors are credited in individual pages.