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.

Books

Property Playbook
The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform

Articles and Editorial on Property
on Engagement
on Climate and Justice
on Energy
on Architectural Research

Building & Interior Design Minsu
Farmhouse
Block Pantry
Pinterest Headquarters

Landscape & Urban Design Resilient by Design Challenge
Fall Kill Master Plan
National AIDS Memorial

Games & Mixed Media In It Together
Bartertown
Mix & Match
Safari

ExhibitionsSeoul Biennial
Oslo Biennial
YBCA

FarmhouseSonoma County, CA
2024

This project creates a place for family and friends to gather, tend, observe, and enjoy an oak chaparral landscape that was damaged in a wildfire. The owners’ goal was to repair the land through a slow, incremental, and community-oriented approach to agroforestry.

Our task was to design a home that could accommodate a range of gathering spaces, from big community gatherings to intimate retreats, and a range of sleeping arrangements, from collective sleeping lounges to an Airbnb unit.

The design anchors social spaces around two infrastructural cores, where people can engage with products of the land. One core brought kitchen, workshop, and office spaces together around a wet wall. Another gathered lounges, reading nooks, and sleeping lofts around the thermal mass of a fireplace . Around these cores, four L’-shaped volumes, which we called the Four Sisters, created a series of courtyards and pocket gardens where interior and exterior spaces flow into each other.

We also made use of a remaining rammed earth foundations from a previous structure, following foundations in some places and counteracting them in others. Gaps between new and old create surprising moments, such as sunken seating pits and tiny gardens.

ClientPrivate Client

Scope
2700 square foot home, guest suite, workshop, and outdoor gathering. Schematic Design phase only.

Design Team If/Then Studio (Sara Dean, principal with Gibran Larquier) served as project architect. If/Then Studio and All of the Above (Janette Komoda Kim, principal) collaborated as design partners.