Janette Kim and N H D M Architects

In this video, two of the winning firms present their work at the third evening of the 2023 Emerging Voices online lecture series. 

Janette Kim, principal of the design firm All of the Above, co-director of the research laboratory Urban Works Agency at the California College of the Arts, and independent scholar and author, analyzes the problems with today’s predominant models of community engagement. Through a number of projects, including In It Together, a board game that tests how diverse communities can work together to adapt to climate change; and The Underdome Guide to Energy Reform, a book that maps the political implications of energy management in architecture, Kim present’s her work distributing power in the built environment by translating between among its various stakeholders them, to go “from public engagement to collective power”.

Nahyun Hwang and David Eugin Moon, founders of the New York-based N H D M Architects, frame their work as invested in both architecture’s material manifestations and its larger milieu. In this talk they explore the themes of reconfiguring public ground for public use, emergent dwelling typologies, and migration/ belonging, through a series of projects spanning from research to speculative projections to buildings.

The presentations are followed by a conversation with Marc Neveu, co-director of the Center of Building Innovation (CoBI) at Arizona State University and the past executive editor of the Journal of Architectural Education. The conversation delves into the difficulties faced by small practices, speculations on getting beyond the client based model of architecture, and what each winner’s advice to their younger self would be.