|
Van Evera Bailey Fellow
Emi Day, AIA
Emi is an architect, strategist, and founder of One Day, a neighborhood placemaking studio rooted in social impact, climate action, and community resilience. Working across civic, technology, and education sectors, she brings a user-experience mindset to the built environment, leading inclusive projects that create more connected, human-centered cities.
Emi is using fellowship funds to realize Bridging Portland, a citywide dinner series that reimagines Portland’s bridges as cherished public venues—temporary festival streets where people gather, eat, create, and celebrate together. By transforming these iconic structures into civic tables through community-driven programming, the project demonstrates how shared ritual in public space can renew trust, spark joy, and strengthen Portland’s collective identity.
Emi’s current work focuses on helping small creative businesses activate vacant storefronts and promoting cyclelogistics as a way to build cleaner, safer, and more livable communities. Emi has designed award-winning high schools, facilitated international workshops, and has extensive public service field experience, including frontline work with the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic and disaster relief efforts for displaced residents following Hurricane Katrina.
Emi is a licensed architect in Oregon, a member of the American Institute of Architects, and serves on the City of Portland’s Bicycle Advisory Committee. She studied Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University, where she received the Frederic Conger Wood Fellowship for her honors research on eco-schools in Europe and Japan. She holds concurrent Master’s degrees in Architecture and Education from the University of Oregon, and proudly lives car-free in Northwest Portland.
| 
