Community-Based Design:
Celebrating [in— between] Cultures & Reclaiming the Street
Academic Research
Harvard Graduate School of Design
2024
Study developed with Hanzhang Lai and Victor Tessler
As a simple definition, immigration is the movement of people departing from one territory towards another. Despite being an old phenomenon, it has increased over the years given a set of different reasons – such as education, the search for a better life quality, or the necessity to escape or war and natural disasters. What does belonging and membership mean when you live in a different surrounding and are faced with unfamiliar cultures and practices? For many in this context, community-building is less about connecting to the new territory and more about designing alternative spaces where their heritage and native culture can thrive.
These spaces extend beyond the physical – they are acts of resilience and identity, where immigrants create a sense of home within the unfamiliar. Care is here defined as an active and transformative force that unites people, especially in contexts where they are overlooked. However, for it to truly be a transformation tool, it shall go beyond giving attention to immediate needs – it should be a political stance that empowers people. Co-design, with its focus on participation and engagement across communities, emerges as a powerful tool to achieve this goal.
When framing immigration in the United States, Brazilians stand as one of the largest immigrant populations, numbering nearly 800,000 individuals. In Massachusetts, Brazilians form the largest immigrant group as of 2022, with a particularly strong presence in urban areas that offer industrial opportunities and support networks. Nearly half of this community resides in the Greater Boston area, concentrated in cities such as Everett, Boston, Revere, and Somerville. Since the 2000s, East Somerville has become the destination of a series of people from not only Brazil, but also Central America and Haiti. These individuals opened a range of small business such as restaurants, hair salons, grocery stores and barbershops, leading to an economic renewal of the area.
Despite their growing numbers, Brazilian immigrants often remain underrepresented and largely invisible to American institutions and the broader public. This lack of recognition creates barriers to accessing services and gaining acknowledgment for their contributions to the state’s economic and cultural fabric. Challenges include limited knowledge of civil and labor rights, low English proficiency, anxieties related to undocumented status, and unfamiliarity with the U.S. healthcare system. These obstacles are compounded by anti-immigrant sentiment, which affects the community’s mental health.
Housing affordability emerged as a pressing concern for the Brazilian community specifically in Somerville. According to an interview we conducted with a representative of SomerViva, Somerville's Office of Immigrant Affairs, many Brazilians face significant challenges in affording rent. In response to these difficulties, SomerViva provides a range of support services designed to address the needs of immigrant residents. These include food and rental assistance, guidance with business support applications, information on legal aid, and interpretation services for city meetings.
Field research highlighted additional struggles within the Brazilian immigrant community. Many individuals, particularly those who are undocumented, are unable to secure formal employment, pushing them into unofficial roles that often require working multiple shifts to make ends meet. Language barriers further exacerbate these challenges, as English is not their first language. Additionally, a lack of community events—partly due to time constraints from demanding work schedules—limits opportunities for broader social connections. Instead, people tend to form small, tight-knit groups or gather in spaces such as churches, which play a key role as community hubs.
Methodology
The research process combined fieldwork, community engagement, and qualitative methods to gather insights. The team dedicated a day to field research along the street of Broadway in East Somerville, MA engaging directly with local business owners to understand their experiences as Brazilian workers in the United States. The area was chosen due to its particular history of East Somerville: in the 1970s that part of town was geographically isolated while the Interstate 93 was constructed, and gained reputation as unsafe; in consequence, much of the newer migrant communities established business and housing there, creating a strip of diversity seen in the facades, restaurants and sounds of passersby.
The team attended a SomerViva meeting conducted in Portuguese, which allowed for a better understanding of the needs and concerns of Brazilian residents. Two online meetings with SomerViva's Portuguese Services Coordinator were also conducted to gain more knowledge into the organization's ongoing initiatives. An online survey was also distributed to Brazilian residents in Somerville. This survey sought to identify what residents most value in an event designed specifically for them.
For research and to explore strategies for fostering community engagement, the group met with different groups with current activities in the region: with Soccer Without Borders, non-profit present all around the United States with focus on using soccer as a universal language to create positive change, and with CultureHouse, an interdisciplinary team based in Somerville that works with local communities to improve livability by transforming underutilized spaces. These discussions focused on effective ways to design and execute community events tailored to the interests and needs of Brazilian immigrants.
The Activity
Focused on the main commercial street at East Somerville, the project temporarily transforms the front of a public library into a stadium, a place to talk and meet, an inclusive gathering spot for the community to watch the final match CONMEBOL Libertadores, the biggest soccer competition in South America, where two Brazilian teams, Atlético MG and Botafogo, met.
The event included a large screen projecting the game, with seats for the passerby to stop and feel welcome. Goalies and soccer balls by the side, inviting kids to play and engage with soccer in the spirit of fun and community. Interviews were conducted with attendees to gather feedback and insights about their experiences as Brazilians living in Somerville, fostering dialogue about identity, belonging, and cultural celebration.
Beyond the game itself, the event seeks to reclaim urban public spaces as areas for community gathering, connection, belonging, and the contributions of immigrant communities to the city's cultural landscape. The goal is to celebrate the cultural heritage of immigrant populations, particularly from Brazil and Latin America, by offering a public, shared experience through the passion for soccer.
Process
With a short timeline between concept, team confirmation and event date, there were around 15 business days for licensing and production. The usual process in the City of Somerville takes between 4 to 6 weeks, so we had to remove certain ideas to avoid additional constraints. Another challenge was the date: scrambled inside thanksgiving weekend, most public services would be closed in that week. The license was approved at the last minute: the day before Thanksgiving, under the conditions that the City and Public Works would not support – electricity, data, furniture, all by scratch.
Outcome
The event was held on Saturday November 30th, from lunchtime to the sunset around 5pm. The day was cold: after a mild November, it felt like the start of winter in the region, with temperatures below 40F.
The setup begins around 10 AM. During the process of transporting and gathering the necessary items, a board with questionnaires is set up with sticky notes, markers, and planner dots, alongside the event poster, in order to gather feedback as well as promote the event. Starting at 1 PM, the library behind our site closes, and we begin setting up the projection screen, generator, mini goals, seating area, and decorations. The game officially starts at 3 PM EST, which is 5 PM Brasilia Time, and the event lasts for two hours and ends at 5PM EST.
Takeaways
Reflecting on the event, we gained more hands-on experience in agenda planning and the physical event preparation process that we can apply to future projects. For example, we successfully obtained the outdoor event license from the City Clerk three days before the event date. This experience familiarized us with the process, allowing for more time to prepare for the delivery.
Throughout the event planning process, we established connections with various nonprofit organizations such as CultureHouse and Soccer Without Borders; government representatives from Somerville City Hall, the Mayor’s Office, and Somerviva; as well as local immigrant residents and individual business owners. We hope to extend these connections after the event, using it as a starting point to build more community-engaging initiatives that empower the local population.
In addition, mixing quantitative with qualitative methods on the research process provided an in-depth understanding about what are some of the needs and struggles of the Brazilian Population in Massachusetts. How to care for people facing language and cultural barriers, and therefore, having restricted access to the country where they live, emerges as a potential next step of the research around immigration, an agenda that the group members will continually work on during their tenure at Harvard.