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