Facilitated Lab
2024
Facilitator
How do we shape, experience, and imagine "home" within the Asian diaspora? In partnership with the Asian American Justice Innovation Lab, this Lab invited participants to explore "home" as both an imagination and a geography—examining how Asian identities are formed and expressed through spaces outside of their 'homeland.' By looking at both private and public spaces in the built environment, we identified where we feel affirmed or erased within our personal dwellings, neighborhoods, cities, and beyond. Through collective discussions and design exercises, we explored how identity, migration, ancestry, and the complexities of cultural expectations hold visual presence and meaning in the spaces around us.
This lab ran for 5 months in 2024 and invited anyone who identifies as part of the South Asian, East Asian, South East Asian, West Asia, Central Asian, and Pacific Island Diaspora.
This Lab is indebted to and was inspired by: Center for Babaylan Studies, "Home Bound: Filipino American Lives Across Cultures, Communities, and Countries" by Yen Le Espiritu, the Design as Protest Collective, the Urban Humanities Network and “Is There Such a Thing as Asian Diasporic Architecture?” in the Dark Matter Issue of Architects Magazine by Tonia Sing Chi, BZ Zhang.
