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

The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform2015

Underdome is the first book to map the political implications of energy management in architecture. It reenvisions collective priorities in the face of climate change, at scales ranging from the microelectronic to macroregional. The book catalogs conflicts and affiliations among energy agendas to inform public action and function as a “voter guide.” Underdome is a call to action, urging citizens and designers to question how political ecology can reshape architectural objects and objectives.

Publisher
Princeton Architectural Press
Credits Janette Komoda Kim and Erik Carver, authors, with essays by Georgeen Theodore and architectural historians Reinhold Martin, Jonathan Massey, and Michael Osman. Research/Design Assistants: Momo Araki, Skylar Bisom-Rapp, Gabriel Burkett, Kyle Hovenkotter, Min Kim, Standish Lee, Jake Matatyaou, Simon McGown, Leah Meisterlin, Talene Montgomery, Katie Okamoto, Michael Schissel, Parker Seybold, George Valdes, and Benjamin Weinryb-Groshgal.

"The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform is a complex yet visually rich guide to tactics that can and are making buildings and cities more sustainable."
- A Daily Dose of Architecture
"The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform provokes thinking about design as a form of political action."
- Architect Magazine
"In a world that privileges laws and econometrics, The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform offers deceptively simple and largely underexploited spatial tools for leveraging environmental change. This book is a bright diagram for a new habit of mind about design."
- Keller Easterling
"The Underdome is a tremendous achievement. The very idea of drawing policy or cultural temperament is really valid and noteworthy, a brand new filter for critical thinking." eOculus

Grants/AwardsVan Alen Institute, New York Prize Fellowship, the Graham Foundation, and Columbia University GSAPP.

Authored Writings onUrbanNext (2015), Posters for Change ( 2018), ACSA Proceedings (2016)

Published ReviewsThe LeFevre Fellowship (2018), Felowships at Van Alen (2017), Graphic Design for Architects (2015), Princeton Alumni Weekly (2016), Metropolis (2015), Architects Newspaper (2015), Architect Magazine (2010), Urban Omnibus Blog (2010), Society of Architectural Historians blog (2010), eOculus (2015), Architect Magazine (2015), Architects + Artisans (2015), Form Pioneering Design (2015), Archinect (2015), Buckminster Fuller Institute (2015).

Research TeamResearch/Design Assistants: Momo Araki, Skylar Bisom-Rapp, Gabriel Burkett, Kyle Hovenkotter, Min Kim, Standish Lee, Jake Matatyaou, Simon McGown, Leah Meisterlin, Talene Montgomery, Katie Okamoto, Michael Schissel, Parker Seybold, George Valdes, and Benjamin Weinryb-Groshgal.