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Project Type: Architecture Thesis
Date Completed: Spring 2025
Location: Washington Crossing, PA
Advisor: Surella Segú︎︎︎

Land, Being, Belonging: The Power of Coexistence in the Ever-Changing World


Awarded the 2025 RISD Architecture
Undergraduate Thesis Prize

Seeking community is a desire embedded in all of us. We long for spaces of expression, mutuality, respect, and authenticity. “Standard” design practices based on expansion, extraction, and linearity have only propelled our desire for community as we lose sight of each other. Even in a world built on division, isolation, and rejection, historically marginalized community members continue to seek one another out time and time again.

Master Plan Collective
1. Master Plan Collective

Community-based efforts are at the forefront of environmental, social, and economic justice movements that are all interconnected within larger systemic structures. Indigenous Peoples around the world persist in navigating the ever-changing world through practices, philosophies, and relationships rooted in reciprocity with the land, non-human beings, and each other. The abundance of knowledge sharing, storytelling, and collective care Indigenous Peoples continue to remedy within colonial structures of violence, oppression, and injustice is indicative of resistance movements everywhere.

Material choices
2. Material choices

Paying homage to 2SLGBTQIA+ HOUSE cultures formed in response to Western exclusionary practices, this thesis proposes a new housing typology as a dynamic, living entity that embodies a sense of belonging for all beings, both human and non-human. It offers endless adaptable possibilities that change over time, seasonally, and with the communities that inhabit it at various moments. The project offers an architectural practice expressing gratitude to the land and enabling us to foster a world built on mutual responsibility, participation, and exchange within the collective power of coexistence.

House for All Beings - Gabion Wall Base
3. House for All Beings - Gabion Wall Base

The ways in which we engage, interact, and cultivate community have the potential to inspire our immediate movement(s) and expand beyond a culture of damaged into a culture of desire. We often have to ask where do we begin to address circumstances that often stem from a root of violence, but we must determine what we would like ourselves to become. Even in the moments of uncertainty, conflict, and contradiction, we still have the power to influence the desired outcomes if we work collaboratively.

House for All Beings - Seasonal Flex
4.  House for All Beings - Seasonal Flex

“This is why it is useful to see love as a practice. We learn to communicate, to be still and listen to the needs of our hearts, and we learn to listen to others. We learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well as the joy, of those we love” - bell hooks

All of us, human and non-human, have a role, responsibility, and obligation to one another. These responsibilities depend on what you are able to handle at various moments of life, and new circumstances impact the ways in which we will respond.

When we begin to open our eyes and see the world around us, we are able to contextualize ourselves within the larger interdependent system and recognize the power of coexistence.


The Power of Coexistence - All Our Relations
5. The Power of Coexistence - All Our Relations

“These things hold story and memory, responsibility and care. They remind me of people and places, ceremonies and obligations I am only beginning to understand…You look at them and see memory and history, connection and relationship. The items in our bundles have ancestors too: they have stories to tell us about the lives they led before they arrived in our hands. These things that are precious to us connect us to relatives and histories, to memories and stories unspoken and relatives we may or may not wish to claim. When I say return to yourself and pick up your bundle, I am asking you to look at those things with new eyes. Listen to their history and remember your relationship and obligations” -Patty Krawec


Land, Being, Belonging Probe
6. Land, Being, Belonging Probe

This work is real, not speculative. I am one of many navigating colonial systems of violence, oppression, and injustice through resistance and resilience efforts. It is important to me not only to share my lived experiences that shape these approaches, but also all those who came before me who have shaped this body of work. Each item, object, and being on this shelf holds meaning, stories, and a connection to a larger narrative. I hope that you will stop to take a look and listen.