Shiqiao Li

Education

Birkbeck College, University of London, PhD
AA School of Architecture, AA Grad Dip
Tsinghua University, Bachelor of Architecture

Biography

I research in the area of urban and architectural theory in writing and design. Published in Power and Virtue, Architecture and Modernization, Kowloon Cultural District (with Esther Lorenz), Understanding the Chinese City, journal articles, as well as delivered through keynote and guest lectures around the world, my contribution to urban and architectural theory makes evident the operations of culturally and intellectually constructed values instrumental to the production of cities and architecture. My research enlarges thinking spaces within which more sensible and effective actions in the constructed environment can be formulated. I seek pathways of intellectual understanding and response in architecture that aim to restore our pervasively technologized and ecologically strained world to its fertile functions.

My teaching integrates history and theory with design. Under studio instruction, my students won several first prizes in international student design competitions, the AIA Unbuilt Award, and were nominated and shortlisted for RIBA President’s Medal. Through courses in history and theory, I bring a critique of the world system and its more recent neoliberalization through the financialization of urban and architectural design. I seek insights in deep cultural frameworks through studies of Chinese cities, as well as how these cultural frameworks are fundamentally structured by distinctive features stemming from the linguistic constructs of Indo-European and Sinitic languages. All these come together to formulate new theoretical grounds for design.