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.
Books
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Manifold Enclosures
Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
2023
In 2021, the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) purchased Esther’s Orbit Room, the last remaining venue of Oakland’s West Coast blues scene, to build a haven for Black culture. This research combines two kinds of analysis—an as-built study of the Orbit Room and an institutional portrait of EB PREC—to learn how the building’s architectural arrangement could support EB PREC’s inventive model of property ownership. The work revealed how the co-existence of multiple kinds of enclosure enable diverse occupants to invent, enjoy, and modify their own definitions of collectivity.
Team and Image Credits
Janette Komoda Kim/Urban Works Agency with Hannah Leathers and Bennett Grisley. See detailed project page.
Related Article
Janette Kim, “Manifold Enclosures: Decommodifying Property at Esther’s Orbit Room,” in Public Culture, “Other than the City: Variations on a Theme” Vol 34:3, ed. Arjun Appaduraii, Erica Robles Anderson and Vyjayanthi V. Rao, with Keller Easterling (Duke University Press: 2022). Link.
More InformationPlease visit the Urban Works Agency website here.