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. 


These projects (and a few others) are also linked below. Please be in touch! 


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


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Property Playbook
Forthcoming 
Property Playbook: How architects and activists can shape land justice illustrates how activists and architects can co-opt legal and financial tools of property ownership to lay the foundation for a just and ecologically vibrant built environment. The book presents 24 plays, or strategies for reclaiming ownership, and invites designers and activists to put them into practice. From limited equity cooperatives to the public trust doctrine, these plays include inventive legal-financial instruments and governance methods currently being championed by community-based organizations across the United States.


Plays are defined in three main chapters. Collectivity plays challenge the exclusivity of ownership by extending democratic governance beyond self-interested actors. Temporality questions the durability of property, and Use interrogates its purpose. Research on plays is accompanied by illustrations showing their material manifestation in the built environment. The book’s lush drawings explore two key architectural strategies: enclosure and occupation.

Image CreditsJanette Komoda Kim with select drawings by Natalie Schtakleff
Awards/Grants
Brunner Grant for Architectural Research, MacDowell Fellowship, and Gensler Center at California College of the Arts