A Focus On What?

Too often in architecture and design the people who make everything are ignored. While craft is often framed in mystical, phenomenological terms, its primary expression is in the under-appreciated labor that shapes everyday things. In my work, I strive to foreground the embodied energy and human effort embedded in what I help create, and to make ordinary things with extraordinary care.

There is a well documented housing affordability problem in the US, even in places with enough housing to go around. I feel proud to have contributed to over a dozen supportive or affordable housing projects in my career so far. I also deeply believe that our housing shortage is inextricably linked with the financialization of the housing market and not just supply lagging demand. I aspire to be a part of shifting our housing stock from private to public ownership through commoning practices like social housing, co-ops, intentional communities, community land trusts, and more diverse public spaces. Access to adequate housing is a human right.

The planet is warming up at an alarming rate, and those of us who work in the AEC industries cannot continue to sideline our role in it. Faced with a crisis this existential, I think it's our responsibility to practice what some folks call regenerative building. It's a broad term, borrowed from the equally broad "regenerative agriculture," but when I say it I mean maintenance, repair, building less, adaptive reuse, bioregional construction, a circular construction economy, bio-based materials, equitable supply chains, and environmental stewardship. Through The Last Straw and CASBA, I advocate for regenerative building practices, promoting care and sufficiency over authorship and opulence.