Thesis: Jessica Wong

Infrastructures of Collective Care

This thesis aims to paint a holistic story of a community’s history of struggle, relentless perseverance, and future scenarios of community growth in Philadelphia’s Chinatown through a graphic novel-based approach. The project takes on a framework of care that intends to cultivate social cohesion and a collective consciousness. Within this conceptual framework, five distinct aspects of care are outlined: caring about, caring for, care giving, care receiving, and caring with. Through these principles of care, this thesis explores ways to disrupt the ongoing structural violence and impositions faced by communities of color due to unjust and ignorant policies and urban development

Jessica Wong
The graphic novel is comprised of urban design strategies that represent the intersection of a yearlong process of research, analysis, and engagement. Architectural and landscaping interventions reveal themselves in the graphic novel in hopes of projecting alternative Chinatown futures capable of resisting future institutional pressures of carelessness
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
A larger network of speculative care intervention was identified through a series of nodes seeking to amplify the already present social, economic, and cultural vibrancies of Philadelphia’s Chinatown. The network consists of both future sites and existing assets that rely on adjacencies in the urban fabric of the neighborhood in the justification of their programming.
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
A range of program typologies such as the home, park, school, and storefront were analyzed as case studies in Chinatowns across the U.S. and Canada. Many of the selected case studies have hybrid or subterranean functions that go beyond their face-value program. These drawings analyzed the concepts of care exhibited and principles outlined in the Care Manifesto.
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
A design and research catalog were formed out of a combination of program typology research, architectural precedents, the five concepts of care, as well as sentiments and desired program expressed by individuals at the Chinatown Futures workshop and public survey disseminated by the Save Chinatown Coalition. The site model was used to create links between varying layers of information to create networks of care that led to speculative design interventions in the graphic novel.
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
As a means of demonstrating solidarity with the Chinatown community as they fight the development of the proposed 76’ers arena in Center City, a community engagement workshop was held at Philadelphia’s Center for Architecture. Members of the Save Chinatown Coalition partnered with students, including myself, and faculty at Penn to host a workshop intended to dream new possibilities into the Fashion District site. Despite being geared toward resistance against the proposed arena, gathered and valuable insights acted as key criteria for the establishment of a larger network of care that this thesis aims to promote in conversation with existing efforts of the Chinatown community.
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong
Jessica Wong

Jessica Wong

Thesis: Jessica Wong

Students