Evan Shieh

Evan Shieh is an architect, urbanist, researcher & educator, and an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA) where he teaches design studios and topical seminars. He is also the director & founder of Emergent Studio, a full-service design & research studio that investigates how emergent patterns, paradigms, and phenomena impact the built environment in an era of rapid urbanization. The studio engages in design & consulting work that cuts across multiple scales and forms of representation (from cartographic mapping to architectural graphic novels) that are able to speak to a diverse set of audiences & stakeholders.

Evan was trained as an architect & urban designer at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design (GSD) where he holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction, and at the University of Southern California (USC) with a Bachelor of Architecture. He is the recipient of Harvard GSD's graduating Thesis Prize in Urban Design, the Award for Academic Excellence in Urban Design (Highest GPA), the Award for Excellence in Urban Design, as well as the prestigious Irving Innovation Fellowship which allowed him to teach design studio and advance his personal research pedagogy as an Irving Fellow in the year following his graduation.

Evan's interdisciplinary research focuses on the spatial impact of mobility infrastructure and new mobility technologies on design, planning and other key aspects of the built environment. His latest design-research work, Autonomous Urbanism: Towards a New Transitopia, speculates on the latent & transformative impact autonomous vehicles will have on the future built environment of our cities, illustrated through the format of a graphic novel. Autonomous Urbanism was curated and exhibited at the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism, as well as the 2020 Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

Throughout his career, Evan has had his research & design work exhibited around the world, and he has won several international design competitions including the 2014 [AC-CA] Architectural Competition Concours d’Architecture, the 2012 Julius Shulman Design Competition, and most recently was awarded 2nd place Runner-Up in the 2019 Global Schindler Award Competition and a Runner-Up 2021 A+D Museum Still-on-Paper Design Award.

Evan has lived and worked bi-coastally in the US as well as internationally in East Asia in both the private & public sectors. Prior to founding Emergent Studio following almost a decade of professional working experience, he worked as an urban designer at Henning Larsen, an architect and project lead at UNStudio, and a researcher at NYC’s Department of City Planning, amongst several other offices on a range and scale of diverse projects: from large-scale district masterplanning, civic & cultural buildings, to residential & commercial projects.

Companies

• Assistant Professor of Architecture The University of Virginia School of Architecture (2021)
• Director, Founder Emergent Studio (2021)
• Intermediate Urban Designer Henning Larsen (2020 — 2021)
• Project Manager, Designer City Form Lab (2019 — 2019)
• Graduate Teaching Fellow Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2018 — 2019)
• Urban Design Researcher New York City Department of City Planning - Urban Design Division (2018 — 2018)
• Project Leader, Architect UNStudio (2017 — 2017)
• Architect UNStudio (2016 — 2017)
• Junior Architect UNStudio (2014 — 2016)

Education

• Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2017 — 2019)
• Bachelor of Architecture (BArch) University of Southern California (2007 — 2012)