We Find Ourselves in the Shape of Home

We Find Ourselves in the Shape of Home is a visual art project that examines Villa Victoria’s apartment buildings and neighborhood design as physical expressions of the Puerto Rican diaspora, collective resistance, and cultural survival. Rooted in historical research and lived experience, the project asks how architecture can function not only as shelter, but as a container for memory, values, and communal identity.

Villa Victoria was not simply built—it was fought for. Its founding emerged from political struggle, community organizing, and a refusal to be displaced during Boston’s urban renewal era. This work explores how those conditions remain embedded in the built environment itself: courtyards, stairwells, pathways, shared spaces, and the intentional closeness of neighbors. Through this lens, architecture becomes a living archive, revealing how a community shaped space to reflect who they were, what they needed, and what they refused to lose.