Homelessness and food insecurity are issues in every metropolitan area across the United States. Current solutions only offer temporary answers, which is not a sustainable way of thinking. Prioritizing the people and the community needs is a way to begin to understand better design strategies for long term solutions. A new way to start thinking about designing a permanent residence and providing food security is by creating spaces that provide safety and security to aid in comfort and recovery, fostering a community to work together to address these issues, and make the system a sustainable one to break the cycle of homelessness while helping the environment for which they inhabit.

Resettling into another country is never an easy task; how can we designers make displacement and the refugee crisis a design solution? This thesis proposes both temporary and permanent housing as part of a more robust, more sustainable solution. The Lake Van region of Turkey is a key area in the flow of refugees in the middle east, and this project proposes a combination of local materials and prefabricated units to provide housing and amenities for those on the journey to safety.

Working with a team of architecture, interiors, and real estate students, and collaborating with community stakeholders, this project focuses on expanding the capabilities of the mutual aid group, North Philly Peace Park. The site sits within a primarily Black and low income neighborhood and includes a community garden and rowhouse prototype for temporary housing. We wish to actualize the larger vision of Peace Park through architectural support in a way that meets physiological needs, invites commerce, allows knowledge exchange, and community healing so that residents can reclaim space, agency, and sense of place. The project would provide food, energy, shelter, Black self determination, and resilience that could hopefully be replicated throughout Philadelphia.

Due to unjust practices in the architecture and interior design fields, the built environment lacks equality. In particular, racist practices such as redlining and Jim Crow laws have shaped the built environment to systematically dictate who belongs where. This thesis uses inclusionary methods and community-based design to create a school for underprivileged youth, and make a healthier built environment for everyone.

The US correctional system is the largest and most pervasive social control system in the world; its cyclical nature displaces millions of lives each year. This thesis project confronts mass incarceration in America by using architecture and design to improve the incarcerated experience. These designs promote a more rehabilitative environment and enable human connections using architectural fluidity, spatial flexibility, natural light, and material texture to provide relief from inmates’ relentless world of confinement and cultivate an environment that instills hope for a productive life after prison.