We recently connected with Yushan Jiang and have shared our conversation below.
Yushan, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I have been interested in four things since I was a kid: painting, photography, traveling, and Legos. So, when I entered college, I chose architecture and urban design as my major without thoroughly considering my long-term career goals. I believed, as everyone else believed, that this is the profession that allows me to enjoy what I love to do in everyday life. I love the design and making things, but I was not completely firm about committing to an architect career when I first started.
Then, as often happens, a small moment confirmed my choice to pursue architectural design as my career. One assignment I had in college asked me to conduct thorough research on one traditional urban housing in Shanghai and propose an alternative design to improve living quality there. During my visit to the site, I was struck by the complicated circulation and messy layout, but was warmly welcomed by the local residents. They each shared their hopes and visions for bettering their daily life spacially, believing I was professional despite being just a college student at the time. That experience made me realize the profound responsibility and power of architectural design; the impact and agency of design are more than a beautiful space itself. I have been certain since then that I want to take this creative path as my life-long journey, as architecture is the profession that allows one to visualize and articulate even the most trivial thing in the most meaningful way.
Yushan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I am Yushan Jiang, a Brooklyn-based, interdisciplinary architectural designer. I am currently working for SHoP Architects in New York, and have previously practiced in China and Singapore. I earned my Master of Architecture degree from Yale in 2022, where I was awarded the Suzanne Sheng Memorial Scholarship by the Connecticut Architecture Foundation. Before that, I completed a Bachelor of Engineering in Urban Planning at Tongji University. The experience of studying and living in international cities and practicing design at various scales has trained me as a designer with a global perspective and multifaceted approach.
My design focuses on the subtle interplay between culture, nature, and the built environment. By seeking the synergy between the intertwined elements, architecture becomes a manifesto of the mundane and the reimagining of the extraordinary. Through observation of the everyday and manipulation of the nuanced, I explore how design can tackle social and environmental challenges, revealing possibilities within the current and opportunities for the future.
I have participated in numerous exhibitions and competitions, with my work showcased in Asia and North America. Recently, I held a joint personal exhibition with Shuang Chen titled ‘A Limen: in-between and beyond’ in Boston’s SoWa district. I received the Award for Excellence in Digital/Hybrid Media from the 50th Ken Roberts competition, was shortlisted for the MicroHome competition with my team, and earned the Asian Architectural New Talent award early in my career.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
Architectural design is a depiction of everyday life through the lens of the sublime; specifically, the fundamental design approach addresses cultural and social issues, revealing the underlying interplay nestled in between. As an interdisciplinary designer, I am highly interested in and feel compelled to solve complex problems through small, simple interventions, and suggest something much more expansive. I collaborated with Morgan Kerber on the project “Splice City”, an urban plan to revitalize Sunset Park, Brooklyn which supports the continuation of the Asian and Latinx communities. The project discusses a new community ownership model which seeks to splice racial segregation through event organizing and prioritizes local-based decision-making. We proposed small interventions to occur at three scales distributed along a slice of the site, looking for small built-in in partnership with a large injection of vegetation into the material pallet. The project is the Winner of the 2024 KRob Memorial Delineation Competition, recognized by AIA Dallas and exhibited in AD EX.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Architecture, to me, is a tangible medium in an intangible form. Learning architecture shapes who I am, helping me better understand and situate myself within my surroundings. Practicing architecture, on the other hand, brings my imagination into reality, and allows me to witness the broader influence of design in daily life.
My experience studying architecture is more than obtaining the skills to construct and build but is acquiring the ability to think and criticize. My time at Yale was a journey of self-reconstruction through reading, writing, drawing, and making. I became used to questioning and reflecting while integrating design with a new layer of social and ecological responsibility. The reflective mindset has remained with me and guided my practice as an architect later on.
In practice, being an architectural designer means to translate abstract ideas into physical forms – products that shape the cityspace and inspire its citizens. What could be more meaningful than seeing a simple sketch on paper come to life, becoming part of the daily experience, and implying a discussion that goes far more beyond?