Lily Chishan Wong joins the School of Architecture at Syracuse University as the 2022-23 Harry der Boghosian Fellow. As a transplant between Asia and America, she is interested in how global systems shape building cultures and vice versa.
Her project “Producing Nature” explores the use of plants in architecture and its planetary effects. It considers vegetation as atmospheric design—grown, stored, and shipped globally—and charts the spaces and species involved in the production of “nature.” Inherently interdisciplinary, this exploration seeks to foster cross-pollination between architecture and other fields and to speculate on new environmental engagements.
The research stems from Lily’s professional practice at the architecture and landscape design firm Weiss/Manfredi, where she worked on museum buildings and site design for six fruitful years. Licensed in New York State since 2019, Lily is a current branch member of the National Organization of Minority Architects and the American Institute of Architects.
Lily received a Master of Architecture from Columbia University GSAPP and was nurtured with the Kohn Pedersen Fox Traveling Fellowship, Award for Excellence in Total Design, Lucille Smyser Lowenfish Memorial Prize, William Kinne Fellows Travelling Prize, and Fred L. Liebmann Book Award. She cofounded : (pronounced “colon”), a publication and workshop dissecting the rhetoric and media that are rooted in the field of architecture.
Prior to Columbia, she grew vegetables in an egalitarian community, sowed spatial experiments at Parsons School of Design, and sprouted philosophical ideas at the New School. Aside from cultivating her own garden, her personal interests include street food, fog machines, and Wagnerian operas.
