A Social Reintegration Project

Description:
This project examines social reintegration as an architectural and programmatic challenge, addressing the structural stigmas faced by individuals experiencing homelessness. While emergency shelters provide essential acute services, they often fail to address broader issues of social exclusion, autonomy, and long-term integration. Grounded in “Housing First” principles, the project proposes a hybrid residential and community facility that combines housing, employment training, healthcare, and social infrastructure within a single architectural framework. Central to the proposal is a reintegration program structured around meaningful employment, horticultural therapy, and shared public-facing amenities. Residents participate in the cultivation and management of year-round vegetable gardens and a community restaurant, fostering economic agency, skill development, and social interaction with the broader public. Drawing on research from environmental psychology and therapeutic horticulture, the project situates landscape and productive labor as tools for improving mental health, strengthening social cohesion, and supporting pathways to long-term housing stability. Through precedent analysis and interdisciplinary research, the project reframes shelter architecture as an active instrument of dignity, autonomy, and community belonging. By integrating social, therapeutic, and economic systems within a site-specific architectural intervention, the work contributes to ongoing discourse on housing justice, stigma reduction, and the role of design in supporting vulnerable populations beyond crisis response.



















Collaborators: Sean Lamb, Stephen Baik, Ziyang Luo, Qian Luchen, Ahn Duc Nguyen
Supporter: Ted Kesik

Recommended citation: J. Nguyen, S. Baik, S. Lamb, Z. Luo, Q. Luchen, A.D. Nguyen, "A Social Re-integration Project," in Dichotomy Journal, v.23, pp.35-42, ISSN: 0276-5748