HomeMade Cambodia is a civic infrastructure project I developed through Steve Jensen Design in collaboration with the Peaceland Foundation. It emerges from my long-standing research into adaptive reuse, cultural continuity, and what I have termed “hollow communities” - places that appear administratively resolved yet are severed from livelihood, memory, and civic agency. Working in the socio-cultural context of the Angkor region, I became increasingly concerned with displacement-driven heritage management associated with UNESCO protection frameworks. While monument preservation is essential, the relocation of communities beyond protected zones has often resulted in loss of jobs, weakened social networks, and the erosion of intergenerational knowledge. Families are rehoused, but economic ecosystems and community structures are disrupted. Stability is delivered physically, yet hollowing occurs socially and economically. HomeMade Cambodia is my response to that condition. It is not a housing product; it is a spatial and organisational system designed to restore production, participation, and continuity. The project integrates micro-enterprise, craft workshops, shared kitchens, and incremental domestic space within a modular framework. The small house frames are concrete - deliberately robust, durable, and climatically appropriate - forming a stable civic armature that residents can infill, adapt, and extend over time. The architecture is structured yet intentionally incomplete, allowing life and livelihood to shape it. In my parallel project Angkor Voyager, these frames become timber - lighter and more mobile - but here concrete provides permanence and collective grounding. At the heart of the proposal is the HomeMade main building, conceived as a civic machine. It enables learning, practical training, fabrication, shared meals, and social gathering. It acts as a springboard for self-help and empowerment, supporting residents to generate income, exchange skills, and rebuild community networks. The research underpinning the project involved extensive fieldwork across rural Cambodian communities, meeting elders, leaders, and craftspeople, and translating vernacular material logics and spatial cultures through my Digilogue methodology. HomeMade Cambodia positions adaptive reuse not simply as material conservation, but as civic repair - architecture as enabling infrastructure through which belonging can be rebuilt.

This project also received a gold and silver medal from the UN Design Awards: https://undesignawards.com/winners/view/no/1034.html and https://undesignawards.com/winners/view/no/1027.html