Ying Zhou

Ying Zhou is an architect who joined the faculty of architecture at the University of Hong Kong in 2016. Her expertise is at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and visual art. Her current research investigates the arts ecologies manifested by Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore’s art spaces. She also researches on and writes about heritage conservation, architectural reuse, gentrification, and creative cities. Her research and teaching question how architectural spatial productions—the processes and pathways for creating built environments and the drivers and actors that propel these processes—manifest the larger relationships between urban restructurings, new economies, and governance systems, particularly in East Asian cities.

Prior to her move to Hong Kong, she had been teaching and researching contemporary cities at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ). She was a lecturer and researcher with the chair of Kees Christiaanse at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL) of the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) 2011-2015, where she focused on how contemporary urban developments impact cultural industries in East Asian city centres, and with the chair of Herzog & de Meuron at ETH Studio Basel 2007-2011, where she taught urban research on Kolkata, Damascus and Cairo and produced a book about MetroBasel.

Her work has been exhibited at the at the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, at the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Architecture Biennale, at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, in the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel, amongst other places. She has published in Critical Planning, Monu, Urban China [城市中国 ], LEAP［艺术界］, Art Journal, amongst many others. She has given talks at Tai Kwun, the Urban Land Institute (ULI), Shanghai Modern Art Museum amongst other and has been quoted in the Economist on architectural heritage conservation in China. She is a member of the Built Heritage Research Collaborative at the Faculty of Architecture’s Urban Labs.

Born in Shanghai, Ying holds a B.S.E. in Architecture and Engineering from Princeton, a M.Arch. from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard, a Ph.D. from the ETHZ, and was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Stuttgart. She has taught and practiced in New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Detroit, Boston and Basel.

Companies

• Assistant Professor The University of Hong Kong (2016)
• Module Coordinator, Senior Researcher and Lecturer ETH SEC (2011 — 2016)
• Lecturer and Researcher ETHZ Studio Basel (2007 — 2011)
• Junior Architect Herzog & de Meuron Architekten (2007 — 2008)
• "Career Discovery" Studio Instructor Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2006 — 2007)
• Studio Instructor Boston Architectural College (2006 — 2007)
• Design Intern m.a.d.a. SPAM, Shanghai, PRChina (2004 — 2004)
• Design Intern Hamilton Anderson, Detroit, MI, USA (2002 — 2002)
• Engineering Intern Guy Nordenson and Associates, NY, NY, USA (1999 — 2001)

Education

• Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Architecture ETH Zürich (2015)
• M.Arch Harvard University
• University of Stuttgart (2001 — 2002)
• B.S.E. Princeton University (1995 — 1999)