Project 250: Depths of Desire

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” — Jane Jacobs

Continuing “Project 250”, a personal project based on Michael Sorkin’s Two Hundred Fifty Things an Architect Should Know. — 247. Depths of Desire.

In the hush of twilight, life unfolds in the most essential places—where comfort is not a spectacle, but the sacred mundane. Fluorescent lights flicker, the air conditioning hums, and numbered aisles guide the product & placement. Patterns of living, towers of color rise—carefully arranged, price-tagged, waiting to be measured into recipes and routines. Wandering thoughts, weary footsteps, tired exhales in the world of service retail—a patchwork of stories from the fabric of life, a rhythm craving for routine, chosen pause between the chaos of life.

Someone loads grocery bags into their trunk, laughing at a partner’s joke, tethered to a shared joy. A cart filled with brown paper bags rolls toward another corner, its owner mid-call, life multitasking in motion. A mother gathers her tiny, unruly crew, guiding them across asphalt with instinctive precision—dodging moving cars, wrangling chaos with grace. A single woman walks swiftly with a small brown bag—deli dinner and a drink for one—avoiding eye contact, skipping the small talk at checkout.

Their desires—subtle, sacred, and deeply human—never showed up on my plans or elevations. Walking with intention, lost in the ho-hum of their own worlds, they didn’t miss for a minute the self-sustained community garden I had proposed and the developer had value-engineered.

Their life with the backdrop of stucco façade continues, uninterrupted.

Do you see me, I ask them, the architect designing your Service Retail? Do we belong, they ask me, within the desire of the city speak in the display of the grocery store? Does it dare to whisper comfort to the people searching for a brief moment of peace between school drop-offs, caregiving, deadlines, and Zoom fatigue?

Built for spontaneity. Built for sanctuary. Built for protest. Built for play. Built for beauty and longing. Built for the threshold between work and rest. Built as a heartbeat, daring to whisper back, holding space for all of us.

Not every revolution needs a skyline, sometimes, it begins in a parking lot.

As an architect, a mother, an immigrant, a woman, and a Managing Principal of a global design firm, I’ve lived within layers of urban rhythm. From the historic sprawl of ancient cities to the buzzing density of metropolises, to the choreographed calm of master-planned communities—I’ve seen desire of design shape itself in countless forms.

Through it all, I measure the pulse of every city I experience by two voices: Jane Jacobs and Michael Sorkin. They remind me that cities are not built of concrete and codes—but of people.

People and communities — in all their complexity, are what I design for.

Crosswalks and Corners: Jane Jacobs

Jacobs believed that cities breathe through their people, not because of architects, the fancy renderings developers display at construction sites. People, through “eyes on the street” concept, bumping into each other at street corners sampling new produce, chatting with crossing guards as they help our elementary school children reach their classrooms safely, putting on a little show to entertain them, energize them for the school day! (I still sing Good Morning-Good Morning- Good Morning like our crossing-guard did in Arcadia, and still worry about our crossing-guard that was hit by a SUV parent in Tustin)

Jane wasn’t impressed by the glossy magazines and their masterplans — she demanded basic elements of designed interaction between people and architecture, walkable blocks, storefronts, zoning to invite life.

Rows of beige stucco homes line the Irvine streets, terracotta roofs and manicured palm-trees elevates the elements of Spanish Colonial and Mediterranean architecture. Every home and every village whispers the same master-planned stillness, symmetrical and meditatively similar. Behind this identical façade, life blooms in unruly and beautiful ways, a string of Diwali light lingers on in December, along with Christmas décor. Through the open window you can hear the neighbor’s teenager get frustrated practicing the same piano piece your daughter performed for her honors recital. Backyards growing quintessential citrus family, but also growing mangoes and avocados, jasmine and curry leaves. The canvas of beige stucco homes and white Teslas, but people bringing the diversity -with their routines and rituals, accents and cultures, quietly writing the multicultural and multi-generational stories of their families, one lived and shared moment at a time. The walks along the planned greenspaces bring the generations together, elderly taking walks, empty-nesters walking their dogs, mothers congregating near the playground where kids are playing, plethora of tennis courts and soccer stadiums bringing people in from neighboring cities — living Jane Jacob’s desire, in all it’s radical simplicity.

Not all rosy, the glossy render of affordable and equitable housing needs a conversation, needs a council and a leader called Mayor to believe in it.

Rage and Romance: Michael Sorkin

If Jane Jacobs was the city’s gentle but assertive narrator — guiding the vision of community through stoops and corner stores, sidewalks with stories — Michael Sorkin was the electric guitar solo: raw, untamed, urgent. His writing didn’t simply admire the city, it wrestled with it. New York was all his love, all his attention, all his critique. Jacobs showed the poetry in pedestrian, Sorkin pushed us to the stage and choreograph. He wanted us to love the cities we lived in, and have them love us back — equitably.

Living in Irvine, I often feel this tension between design and desire.

The stucco homes, perfectly spaced trees, HOA-approved calm — it’s a city curated for luxury and comfort. But under the symmetry, the inequitable questions bubble up. Why is sameness in our diversity?

Sorkin warned us: Beware of beauty that silences. Beware of safety that surveils. Beware of architecture that forgets the messy, miraculous humanity.

In a city of sidewalks without cracks and landscaped median dividers, I hear his voice urging.

Make room for protest. Make room for difference. Make room for the misfit.

As someone who leads an office for a global firm, while raising my daughters and navigating a world that still sees me — brown, immigrant, woman — as an exception rather than a default, Sorkin’s voice stirs emotional, existential crisis. As someone who is establishing a Service Retail sector for the firm, Sorkin’s fire in design inspires.

I have shopped for groceries after a long day at work to unwind. I have taken a toddler to get ice-cream at 9 PM on a weekday. I have gone to a bank with my daughters, opening up the safe deposit box like a treasure chest, each piece of jewelry connecting us to culture. The tenderness of the moments we experience in service retail sectors isn’t an exaggerated drama of the visits we plan to the penthouse of a skyscraper, but the emotions don’t need a translator. Life happens under the fluorescent lights, and the gracefully hold the memories.

These are not just transactions. This is theater. This is sanctuary. This is where the city breathes between the lines of its planned masterplan.

Motherhood, Leadership, and a Multistory Costco

I spend my days balancing business development with firm culture, revenue KPIs with brand-building, and yes — family dinners followed by email marathons somedays.

Depths of Desire, for me, are in the mundane and the monumental:

The urge to design a bank that doesn’t intimidate. The dream of Service Retail that enhances neighborhood experience. The need for spaces where architects of all identities can thrive.

My daughter once asked why I put so much effort into designing “another store”. I told her: “Because every space tells people what they’re worth.” That’s what Jacobs and Sorkin knew — urban desire isn’t just aesthetics.

It’s dignity. It’s opportunity. It’s love, made walkable.

The Deepest Desire: Equity

In architecture, equity isn’t a trend — it’s the terrain we must navigate daily.

As a woman of color in leadership, I carry the weight of spaces that never imagined me inside their walls.

Desire without access? It’s not hope — it’s frustration. Or worse, erasure.

Sorkin and Jacobs knew the truth: what gets built — and for whom — is a question of morality, not just materials. Architecture is political.

Every community conversation I hold must confront the question: Whose desire are we honoring here? If we are not designing for diversity, we are decorating injustice. Equity is never extra, it is essential. It is fierce. It is graceful. It is beautiful.

What Would Jane and Michael Say Now?

If I could sit across from Jane Jacobs and Michael Sorkin today — maybe over chai and a little urban gossip — I think they’d agree:

The cities we need aren’t just efficient; they’re empathetic. We don’t need more towers — we need more trust. The best designs are the ones that listen.

The absolute depth of desire: The Blueprint of Longing

Whether I’m leading as an architect, mentoring future architects, or healing from cancer while packing a lunchbox, I’m always aware of the desires shaping my day: the desire to belong, to build, to breathe. I carry that awareness into every design conversation I have.

Jacobs mapped the human patterns. Sorkin wrote the poetry and protest.

And me? I’m translating those into retail projects that hold people, stories, and joy.