Date of Award
Spring 5-31-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
Department
Landscape Architecture
First Advisor
Fatema Maswood
Second Advisor
Mark Hamin
RISD Fleet Library Catalog Record
Landscape Architecture
Abstract
Following feminist theory and spatial critique, this thesis challenges the kitchen’s traditional function as an enclosed site of invisible domestic labor. It reclaims the kitchen as an open, public, and empowering space. In so doing, it reframes it as a critical site of collective resistance, care, and community building.
Fall River, MA is a post-industrial city marked by disinvestment and food insecurity. This thesis integrates existing food pantries and public landscapes into a network of community kitchens using repurposed vacant lots and an existing bike path. These multi-functional spaces where food is grown, cooked, and shared, become an infrastructure of solidarity, intergenerational connection, and food justice.
Through adaptive reuse and inclusive design, the kitchen is imagined not as a site of containment, but one that enables agency. It offers an alternative to domestic hierarchy by taking an inclusive, intersectional approach to urban change that centers dignity, sustenance, and the right to reshape space collectively.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Jiayi, "More Than Her Othering Narrative" (2025). Masters Theses. 1441.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1441
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