My Inspiration
A life shaped by rooms that welcomed — and rooms that didn't.
Every architect begins somewhere. For me, it began in the small differences between a courtyard that opened its arms and a lobby that turned its back.
Origins
Between two cities, two climates, two ways of building — a slow education in space.
I grew up moving between Shanghai and Xinjiang — a city of glass towers and a land of low walls, thick shadows, and courtyards that opened to the sky. In one, buildings performed for the street. In the other, they seemed to breathe with the people inside them.
I noticed, early, that some rooms made me want to stay. Others made me want to leave without knowing why. It took years to understand that the difference wasn't taste, or style, or budget. It was a quiet ethical question, embedded in every threshold: who is this space really for?
The projects on the next page — a library in my grandparents' house, a rest area for factory workers, a church renovation in Chicago — are all attempts to answer that question honestly.
A Timeline
Childhood
Shanghai · Xinjiang
Growing up between two very different Chinese landscapes, learning early that a room could welcome you — or quietly refuse you.
2016
Xinjiang
Transforming her grandparents' courtyard house into a small community library — the first time she saw a wall become a threshold.
2018
Factory town, southern China
Designing a resting space for factory workers, exploring how architecture can offer dignity to those made invisible by labor.
2021
Chicago
A church renovation that revealed how sacred space can hold both grief and welcome at the same time.
2022
Cities everywhere
Encountering the concept of hostile architecture — and beginning to name the invisible wall she had always felt.
Today
Studio practice
The Fifth Wall as a lifelong inquiry: architecture as a language of belonging, not exclusion.