THE DIARY 14: PROPHET WALKER – With a Treehouse On Top!
Prophet Walker, Photo by Sonali Ohrie, Represent Images
The name Prophet stuck with me, and so did he.
I am eternally grateful to some incredible community leaders in Watts/Jordan Downs in South Los Angeles who kept telling me ‘You have to meet Prophet Walker, he loves design!’ I was traveling across the country, working with community leaders, art teachers and cohorts of urban high school-age students, on a mission to share my love of design with young creatives – looking to ignite possibility and creating professional pathways into the design industry.
Prophet and I first met in Watts, in the summer of 2012 at the Jordan Downs Community Center. He was 22 and nearing graduation from Loyola Marymount University with a degree in Civil Engineering. We bonded here, in the heart of this community where he grew up. I would soon learn of his incredible journey and how he leaned into his personal passion, talent, community and resiliency to get to this moment.
Prophet grew up fast. Amidst poverty, violence, and homelessness, this community stuck together and supported one another, he never felt alone. Prophet’s journey is remarkable and inspiring. His adolescence had an abrupt disruption when he was incarcerated at 16 and sentenced to spend 6 years within an adult prison. While incarcerated, he started a state-wide program called the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, that allowed inmates to earn a two-year college degree. Today thousands of inmates participate in the program. Prophet was one of the program’s first graduates to come home and attended LMU where he received a degree in Civil Engineering.
“Going through the prison experience, I started one of the largest college programs in America. I wrote Governor Schwarzenegger a letter of how we could restructure prison and suggested that there should be a college dorm inside prison. My first foray in ‘built community.’” — Prophet Walker
This was just the beginning of Prophet’s tireless advocacy for criminal justice reform. Bringing his own experiences to programs such as the Watts United Youth Peace Builders initiative, Walker has continuously worked tirelessly on behalf of youth and families in the area.
2012 - Big Mike, Robert Lewis, Visit to Jordan Downs, Watts
2016 - Denise Korn and Prophet Walker at the Standard Hotel, DTLA
2014 - Prophet Walker Campaign for California State Assembly
2022 - Denise Korn and Prophet Walker at the ILC Conference, The Line Hotel, LA
We met again the following year (2013) in Boston, at my design studio, when we invited Prophet and a group of young folks and activists from South LA for a visit to our east coast city.
“Almost 10 years ago—maybe more—I went to Boston for the first time and it was a pretty mind-blowing experience for a few reasons.
One, I got to see so many Dominican people, which was an interesting dynamic. To see the youth struggle with many of the same things we struggled with in our inner cities, but also to see such strong Afro Latino representation was really heartwarming and beautiful.
The trip was fun, but I also was blown away, because Denise's studio, Korn Design, wa the first real creative studio that I had ever been in. I remember very clearly, white walls … and I can vaguely remember some plywood, white tables and chairs. It was just a very clean space, but then juxtaposed with a tremendous amount of creativity happening. Denise had contextualized that young urban talent were part of this creation.
It was design, it was architecture, it was all these beautiful things, and I remember thinking — just how special it was for young people to walk into a space that was sort of a white box, if you will a blank slate/space and be invited to create and grow within it.
It was an illustration of how much design could impact the wellbeing of humans. I think that had rested in my mind and in my heart for a long time. I grew to really deeply want to be a part of creating space that brings a sense of calm and allows for pure expression – that gives access to young people to freely pursue their creative endeavors.
As a young person of color—and even in my experience being incarcerated—my imagination, and my mind, was an incredible place of solace and rest and, conversely, when times were difficult, sometimes was an incredible place of turmoil. So, being able to sit in a space where one could openly express one’s own ideas and emotions, and to have those creations take shape and come to life was really, really compelling for me.
At the time of my visit, I hadn’t done any of this stuff that I've done since then. I was just a kid in college and I left that experience just blown away, and with it etched in my heart that if I could have the opportunity to design and create space—for young people and for all human beings—that is contextualized in the tapestry of nature and fluid in its ‘use case’ and creative function, that, in and of itself, would provide a tremendous amount of healing.
To suffice to say, this trip had a big, big impact on me.” — Prophet Walker
As Prophet began working in real-estate, cutting his teeth in development and construction, we continued to keep in touch. Then, just 2 years after first meeting Prophet, he announced his run for California State Assembly! Prophet won the primary but ultimately came in second in the general election – however, his powerful perspectives and voice was heard load and clear – his leadership was rising. The following year, he was a special guest at President Obama’s State of the Union address.
Walker returned to the real estate business and our worlds started to converge – his resumé started stacking up experience in hospitality, housing, restaurants, placemaking, design, management, construction, urban development and community-building – he was getting it done!
He met his business partner, Joe Green. Since day one, their shared understanding of the power of community has fueled the entrepreneurial spirit of Treehouse Living.
Photo by Cynthia Fisher
Just saying the word ‘treehouse’ conjures up a playful freedom connected to nature – an intimate place shared by those invited in. Prophet’s dedication to building a new kind of better community inspired him to dream big, take a risk and follow his instincts to create Treehouse Living.
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“The unspoken secret of L.A. is how divided we are both racially and economically," Walker says. "It's divided very clearly geographically. I grew up in South L.A./Watts, and dealt with all that came with that, from poverty to gang violence. Joe, around the same time, was growing up in Santa Monica and living quite a different life." Now the duo are coming together to challenge the city's fraught legacy of segregation and isolation.”
Via Entrepreneur Media – By Emmy M. Cho • June 8, 2021
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(left to right) Prophet Walker, LA District 4 Councilwoman Nithya Raman, and Treehouse's co-founder Joe Green at the groundbreaking for Treehouse’s second project in Koreatown.
Photo by Cynthia Fisher
Together with Green, they designed a new type of communal living – with a multi-dimensional and multi-generational understanding of creating a place for natural connection that would be both while preserving privacy. Conceptually centering this new approach to residential ‘place and space making’ was inspired by Prophet’s interest in the power of connection and through his dedicated lens of equity, he would be able to invite his community from Watts to Treehouse.
“I bought into this lie of getting out the hood, running away from my community . . . and when I finally got wealth I realized that it had bought isolation . . . and didn’t know a single one of my neighbors, I didn’t connect with them . . . I just knew that others were probably feeling the same.” — Prophet Walker
This is what sparked Prophet to create Treehouse. He began to reframe his thinking around connecting the more than 82 neighborhoods across L.A. – to build places and spaces that allowed people to stay within their community – bridging socio-economic and racial gaps.
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"I really wanted to build a product that kept people in their communities and really try to bridge this gap in socio-economic statuses." — Prophet Walker
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Photo by Cynthia Fisher
Photo by Cynthia Fisher
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“All along, he’d had an idea for a community centered in one building.“My belief was that the world should be connected, but that urban design, like many other things, failed to bring us together,” Prophet said. Walker’s message to friends at the start had been less conceptual than personal: “Join me; we’re trying something.” What emerges from a small community like Treehouse, then, is a theory of togetherness that might inform a larger community.”
Via The New Yorker, In a Divided Country, Communal Living Redefines Togetherness, By Nathan Heller • June 28, 2021
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Turning lemons into lemonade or using the metaphor of a treehouse to reimagine communal living – both are now part of the fabric of Prophet Walker’s journey and legacy. Over the past 10 years I have come to know Prophet, a man with a huge heart and tireless commitment to building better community – drawing from his lived experience to make the world a better place through the power of connection. Treehouse continues to spread its branches into new neighborhoods, propelling new communities and making the world a better place for others.
I am so happy to introduce you. – Denise Korn
This is a picture of Prophet when he was a child and would tag along with his father who did handyman work in South LA. This particular job was at a building (seen in the background) on Crenshaw Blvd in Leimert Park/Park Mesa Heights. Today, Treehouse actually owns that exact building and it is the site where they plan to develop the next Treehouse Community (pretty incredible full circle moment).
