Kenny Wong

Hello! I’m Kenny Wong, a lecturer in CAPLA and coordinator for the Housing Equity Lab of the Drachman Institute. As part of the first generation in my family to attend college, I received my BA in Architecture from the University of California Berkeley and later attended UCLA for master’s degrees in Architecture and Urban & Regional Planning. I like to think broadly about how the built environment shapes and bridges our personal lives and shared experiences. I’m interested in all the ways it takes to make “home”—its planning and organization; its financing, design, and construction; and, crucially, our sense of belonging, social connections, and communities. My work has focused on affordable housing and community development, covering practice, policy, and academia. I was previously the Assistant Director for Design Research at cityLAB UCLA and continue my interdisciplinary work as part of the Urban Humanities Network.

For more on my personal background, I’m an ABC/American-born Chinese from Los Angeles, CA. My parents immigrated to the United States from Kaiping, Guangdong, China in the 1980s, and I was born in LA’s Chinatown. Most of my childhood was in the Midwest though, and I grew up as a teenager in the 626/San Gabriel Valley. After college I lived in Oakland, CA (close to its own Chinatown) for a number of years. These experiences across different contexts are an important part of how I think about place and being part of the Asian American community. My family often speaks the Toisan dialect at home, and I’m a middle child—the second son in my family and an older brother to my sister. In my free time I enjoy visiting new places with arts, food, and drink, and being outdoors through walking, biking, and tennis.