Property is power. The platting and subdivision of land has defined racial and social justice—and exclusion—by shaping the way wealth is created. The Jeffersonian grid, for example, accelerated the colonial settlement of the American West. The single-family home banked on discriminatory loan policies and zoning laws that ban affordable housing in the name of protecting property values. Such systems linger on, preventing Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color from generating wealth. In today’s ‘risk society,’ this legacy leaves precarious communities even more vulnerable to ever-mounting threats of climate change, economic volatility and defunded public health systems. There’s a flip side to property, though. Many of its underlying logics—such as the commons, liability, maintenance, belonging, and yes, even profit—can also be altered towards more inclusive ends. Community Land Trusts, for example, collectivize land while individualizing housing structures. ‘Public Trust’ laws define the public’s right to property by the ever-changing edge between land and water. Such alternate property arrangements can launch deep-seated, systemic reform, prompting social exchange, cultural expression, alternate economies, and ecological vitality. Such arrangements require an entirely different spatial condition, from the scale of the kitchen table to the rooftop to the watershed. In this studio, we will invent new alignments and misalignments across land, foundations, roofs, and furniture. Though property has long assumed a one-to-one correspondence among all of these elements, it is up to designers like you to imagine a far different paradigm. This studio asks how property can be reimagined in the face of crisis to strengthen racial and social justice.The Project: Design one or more buildings in a selected ½-block stretch in West Oakland for the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EBPREC).  Define your own program (for example, affordable housing; workers’ cooperatives; artists’ studios; test kitchens; or a community-owned solar array.) Choose your own sites on or near the 7th Street Corridor in West Oakland--a neighborhood that reveals some of the nation’s most progressive visions of racial justice, and some of its most exclusionary politics. Studio Structure and Method: We will alternate between research and design throughout the semester.

• Research will involve investigations of existing property paradigms, crisis scenarios, and cultural production both in West Oakland and beyond. Students will make analytic diagrams and site maps, and develop unique arguments through visual slide (i.e. powerpoint) narratives. 
• Design will develop through digital models, plans and sections at the building scale, and site plans at the site scale. Our primary final production will focus on a large-scale, lush and playful Graphic Narrative drawings. We will learn from comic books or graphic novels to learn how scenarios can unfold over time within the cultural and social life of West Oakland. 

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