Fellowship Celebration

About Our Featured Fellows

Kayin Talton Davis and Cleo Davis
2023 Van Evera Bailey Fellows

Kayin and Cleo are a team of educators, social construct artists and cultural architects, centering their work on Black culture, community, and the built environment. Building on their years of work with Albina Vision Trust, they are partnering with Robert Clarke, Kimberly Moreland and Molly Esteve, a group of designers and community advocates, to research and produce a Monument Plan for historic Black Portland’s Albina community.

“At the root of the Albina Monument Plan, we see design as a tool for education and movement towards a better future… We seek to understand how monuments will sustain Black belonging and create a network of living histories for Albina that continue to build wealth, cultivate joy, and steward our cultural and ecological ecosystems.”

The Fellowship will support the team’s plan to focus on community as the core of the Albina Monument Plan. This community-led process will include several community workshops, paid student workshops, architectural studio classes at Portland State University, public exhibits and multi-disciplinary modes of engagement and information sharing.

The team’s vision for the Albina Monument Plan is to create “a living framework to guide more inclusive and culturally-responsive design, a catalyst to drive more funding and resources into community, [and] an urban-scale plan through a lens of Black culture and Black celebration.”

Jonathan Bolch
2023 Van Evera Bailey Fellow

Jonathan is a licensed architect, Design Principal at Woofter Bolch Architecture and Adjunct Faculty at Portland State University School of Architecture. Building on his ongoing interest and expertise in small-scale affordable infill housing, Bolch is researching and documenting a vision for alleyway housing on the 76 miles of alleyways found throughout the city of Portland.

“…these largely forgotten spaces can provide a tremendous opportunity for sensitive and impactful development that can help address both the affordable housing crisis and the climate crisis. Their careful development also offers the opportunity to create a network of new urban experiences that can co-exist with and complement the character of existing streetscapes.”

Since the City of Portland’s passing of the Residential Infill Project (RIP), Bolch has seen an opportunity to explore development types now allowed by the new zoning code. The Fellowship will support Bolch as he researches options and creates visions to increase density, looking to existing examples in Kyoto, Japan and London, England as precedent.

“By graphically documenting the existing conditions of Portland alleys, relevant alley housing precedent, and possibilities for development under the RIP, the project can serve as a resource for builders, designers, and other community members by highlighting positive infill approaches and including prototype examples.”

Todd Lawson
2020 Van Evera Bailey Fellow

Todd is a licensed architect, interior architect, lighting designer and artist based in Seattle, Washington. Influenced and passionate about his ancestral ties to the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes, he is helping define, design, and facilitate the creation of a new cultural center, museum, and traditional longhouse on the Clatsop-Nehalem’s reacquainted land near Seaside, Oregon. Todd is using the fellowship to deepen his research on contemporary west coast Native American cultural centers, traditional structures, art, and the building traditions that inspired them.

Diana Moosman
2023 Pat Sanchez Women’s Fellow

Diana is the Director of Design for the Portland Housing Studio at MWA Architects. She will be using the Pat Sanchez Women’s Fellowship to deepen her knowledge of trauma informed design. This is mission-driven work, and she is passionate about bringing good design to affordable housing and finds deep satisfaction in creating places that foster community.