Lexi Tsien is a co-founder of Soft-Firm, based in New York City. She is interested in new forms of representation, vernacular spatial practices, and their ability to shape and self-determine the built environment. Soft-Firm is both speculative and concrete: taking a playful and lo-fi approach to visual perception, elemental forms, and material contrast. The practice has designed interactive exhibitions, residential and commercial projects, and public installations. Seeing architecture at the intersection between culture and built infrastructure, Soft-Firm pursues project that promote agency and equity across private and public spheres.
Her built work with Soft-Firm has been featured in Wallpaper, Metropolis, PIN-UP Magazine, Time Out New York, Architect Magazine, and Architectural Record, and featured on ABC News and PBS Newshour.
Tsien has taught design and representation courses at schools including Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Yale School of Architecture, Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, Parsons School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Syracuse University, and The Cooper Union.
Tsien holds a Master of Architecture from Yale School of Architecture where she received the Moulton Andrus Award for excellence in art and architecture. Prior to co-founding Soft-Firm, she worked at Bernard Tschumi Architects, Davies Toews, and Diller Scofidio in New York, and at Barkow Leibinger in Berlin.
