The Reimagining of the Hawthorne House is a demonstration project that explores how to live in harmony with the built environment. It offers innovative strategies to address the challenges of residing directly under the Hawthorne Airport flight path and just five miles from LAX. The home, built in 1962 and approximately 1,600 square feet, was occupied by Ann and Ronald Matthews from 1987 to 2024. Ronald Matthews, originally from North Carolina, was a minister and descendant of an enslaved woman of the RJ Reynolds tobacco family, and he worked as a technical writer in the aerospace industry. Ann Matthews was an ethnically Chinese immigrant born in Vietnam who served as a counseling clerk at Venice High School after marrying Mr. Matthews in Vietnam and moving to the United States in 1979.

Hawthorne is part of the South Bay aerospace cluster, alongside El Segundo, Redondo Beach, and Torrance—areas known for major companies like Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Honeywell, and numerous startups. The Matthews family reflected Hawthorne’s diverse working-class community, which today is predominantly Hispanic/Latino (~54%), African American (~25%), White (~10–16%), and Asian (~7%). When the Matthews family  first purchased their home, the demographics were more evenly split between White (~31%), Latino (~31%), and African American (~27%) populations.

The city of Hawthorne is considered park-poor, offering just 0.6 acres of park space per 1,000 residents. A key focus of this project is the remediation of chemical exposures inside and outside the home caused by proximity to Hawthorne Airport.

Purpose : 

• to study chemical exposure levels in soil, plant life and air quality due to decades of proximity to direct exposure from the Hawthorne Airport and Los Angeles International Airport

• to identify and develop interventions to mitigate or reduce these exposure levels (native plants, clean energy solutions)

• to publish and share successful interventions and resiliency solutions (white papers, illustrations & knowledge production [independently], public information campaigns [civic sector])

• to establish a six-year ‘case study house’ project —on  ongoing studies of chemical-exposure mitigation through creative residencies (six residencies, six in-kind reports of knowledge production or intervention development) rooted in practices of harmonious living with the land and the built environment