I dream for all to be free to work and live with the rhythm of play and joy of gratitude
It began for me when I was 10 or 12, a calling to help create belonging and community.
Now, decades of living in this strange world later, the journey is clear for me, if not the path.
Dean Suárez-Starfeldt, Consultant
My journey is toward new ways to be a people together in this particular place,
with shared purpose to care for ourselves and each other for our collective prosperity.
The work shared here represents a few branches on my journey these past four years.
My intent is for it to demonstrate a bit of how I collaborate, lead and dream.
My path is one of conversation and questions, ideas and ideals, vision and courage.
I am an explorer and navigator and I hope for our paths to cross.
CLIENT: Colville Indian Housing Authority, White Buffalo Meadows Neighborhood. CONTEXT: The Colville Tribe was struggling to provide housing for their citizens fast enough. We created a vision to help meet the need while also building community, growing culture, and honoring creation. CONTRIBUTION: I led cultural research, identified the pocket neighborhood opportunity, developed the community, culture, creation structure, and wrote the narrative for the Bodwé response to the client solicitation. (Click image for more.)
CLIENT: City of Kalamazoo, Edwards Street Development. CONTEXT: With aggressive goals for housing units and parking spots, our vision for this compact parcel also inspires to build community through restaurant, retail, and live-work opportunities. CONTRIBUTION: Bodwé responded in partnership with PlazaCorp to the City solicitation. I led ideation sessions that resulted in the Edwards boardwalk, Bates interface, and vertical neighborhood design approaches. I developed and wrote the design and community narrative. (Click image for more.)
CLIENT: Fallon Paiute Shoshone, Tribal Cultural Center. CONTEXT: The Tribe is seeking to reimagine a failed cinema-plex-led development with a new cultural center. The Bodwé vision offers an approach grounded in protecting and perpetuating their culture and land that invites this tiny tribe to host a national conversation. CONTRIBUTION: Based on the team's research, I developed the cultural facilities master plan framework and narrative, inspired by Tribal history and the current and future threats to their ancestral land. (Click image for more.)
CLIENT: Kalamazoo Stadium-Drake Initiative. CONTEXT: Citizens and organizations concerned over potential development of the land bounded by Stadium Drive, Drake Road, and Asylum Lake Preserve came together to develop options focused on environmental protection and public benefit. CONTRIBUTION: I led Bodwé volunteers in developing an alternate approach to bring together Kalamazoo Parks and Public Library, with collaborating organizations, to create an "education landscape" for the community and region. (Click image for more.)
CLIENT: 7G Foundation and Oneida Nation, Sports & Culture Complex. CONTEXT: The reservation construct shrouds Indigenous identity, opportunity, and accomplishment, depriving Native kids. Oneida Nation seeks to level the playing field and create a regional center for sports, community, and culture. CONTRIBUTION: As the pre-development project lead for Bodwé, I articulated and helped develop the project vision, mission, guiding principles, framework, program, and branding. (Click image for more.)
CLIENT: City of Kalamazoo, Arcadia Creek Festival Site Redevelopment. CONTEXT: The Bodwé response to the City's solicitation to re-imagine the struggling festival site is more than a design idea, it is a collaborative, creative, and cooperative idea. CONTRIBUTION: I leveraged a Why/How/What framework to develop and articulate a strategic community idea for the site with a new premise, sense of place, and purpose to become an accelerator of the Kalamazoo spirit. (Click image for more.)
