Turning Neighborhood Isolation into Exchange

year

2022

Role

Lead Designer & Lab Research Assistant

timeframe

5 months

tools

Figma, Fusion 360, Blender, Miro

Team

Advisors: Shimon Shmueli, Elena Pacenti, Victor Nacif

Team

Advisors: Shimon Shmueli, Elena Pacenti, Victor Nacif

East Village in San Diego is one of the city’s fastest-changing neighborhoods. Once filled with artists and low-income residents booming with culture, it's now defined by luxury condos, new development, and a rising population of isolated young professionals with no sense of community. Despite this growth, the area has long lacked green spaces and community infrastructure. DEED was created as a direct response to these conditions. It transforms a park-in-progress East Village Green into an activated civic hub where people connect, share, and build together. Through a hybrid system of digital tools and public installations, DEED brings energy and purpose to a part of the city that urgently needs community.

How might we?

How might we transform an underused public space in a gentrifying neighborhood into a living system of care, collaboration, and civic connection?

Intervention

DEED introduces a connected system of civic engagement in East Village through a mobile app, a modular pavilion at East Village Green, and a time-based community currency. By blending digital tools with a physical space for gathering, DEED creates a structure where residents can offer skills, join events, and build meaningful relationships rooted in care and mutual support.

How might we?

How might we transform an underused public space in a gentrifying neighborhood into a living system of care, collaboration, and civic connection?

Intervention

How might we?

How might we transform an underused public space in a gentrifying neighborhood into a living system of care, collaboration, and civic connection?

Intervention

How might we?

How might we transform an underused public space in a gentrifying neighborhood into a living system of care, collaboration, and civic connection?

Intervention

These are some of the maps that informed the project we called DEED. They explore how invisible forces like economic pressure, digital behavior, and emotional distance shape daily life in East Village and contribute to a lack of connection between neighbors. By making these systems visible, we began designing new ways to rebuild community through participation, trust, and shared space.

Scroll through the page to explore personalized resources, intuitive visuals, and easy-to-use features designed to make the FAFSA process clearer and more approachable.

The DEED Pavilion is the heart of the project. Placed within East Village Green, it serves as a physical anchor for connection where people come together to work, learn, share, and celebrate. Its modular design allows it to shift between coworking space, classroom, lounge, or stage depending on the moment. Paired with portable pop-ups, the pavilion expands across the neighborhood, creating flexible spaces wherever community needs a spark.

Time banking is what ties the entire system together. Every hour spent helping others whether through hosting an event, offering a skill, or using the pavilion earns time credits that can be exchanged through the app, tracked in real time, and redeemed within the space using the modular furniture for services, workshops, or hosting an event.

DEED reimagines what public space can do when designed for connection. It turns a park, an app, and a simple act of giving time into a new kind of civic infrastructure. In East Village, it offers a blueprint for how design can repair the social fabric, one shared moment at a time.