Janette Kim, Architecture

Name:

Janette Kim

Title:

Associate Professor and Director, Design and Planning Assistance Center

Department:

Architecture

Describe your research in about 200 words.

I work on climate equity and housing justice, often in partnership with community-based organizations and municipal agencies. I’m trained as an architect, but I often combine tools of urban, architectural, and multi-media design. For example, I’ve designed several board games that civic agencies and grassroots organizations have used to play out more just responses to wildfires and rising seas. I also work in reshaping the spatial and social experience of property ownership. In San Francisco, I worked with civic and community groups to explore how collectively-owned housing could protect communities from displacement due to sea level rise and gentrification. I’m 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. I just relocated from Oakland, CA, where I taught at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. At UNM, I’m directing a center that connects faculty and students at the School of Architecture and Planning to community-led initiatives.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

To ask questions before making assumptions.