Handle with Care

Handle with Care: Migrant Workers, Infrastructure, and the Balikbayan Box

Handle with Care investigates the infrastructures, practices, and socio-economic frameworks that shape the global labour conditions of Filipino women (Filipinas). The project traces colonial histories, rituals, and materials that spatialize the Filipina diaspora, informing designed objects and spaces of dissidence and generational healing.

Focusing on the Filipina domestic worker community in Hong Kong, the primary forms of inquiry are those that facilitate both the physical and emotional labour expected of these women, especially those that link their efforts abroad to economic and cultural stability in the Philippines. This research situates forms like the balikbayan box within a broader history of oppressive labor displacement. The thesis further examines cardboard’s dual role—both as the material of the balikbayan box and as a component of the informal economies domestic workers participate in, such as recycling and temporary urban occupations. Beyond the object, architecture contextualized by local legislation and stigmas is recorded and analyzed to understand its role in the project.

Of a World Yet to Come

Of a World Yet to Come: Modern Architecture and the Politics of Liberation in West Africa, 1957-1985

La Pyramide (1973) Rinaldo Olivieri Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. 3/16” = 1’ Basswood model for The Museum of Modern Art during Crossings Seminar 2025 at The Cooper Union. MODEL TEAM: Angelis Heredia, Tae Kim Krittee, “Gain” Meemongkol, Sofia Ysabel Aguila Mercado, Julian Yang, Evan Chiang, and Tzu Kuan Liao