Liang Wang joins the School of Architecture at Syracuse University as the Harry der Boghosian Fellow. During the 2020-21 school year, Wang will teach an architecture studio and two professional electives focusing on his research project, “The Architecture of the Commons.” By engaging the idea of “commons” in relation to the disciplinary knowledge of architecture and particularly through the lens of the superblock, his research will contemplate the role of architecture as both common means for spatial production and common knowledge in conceiving new modes of collective life and the idea of the city.
Prior to joining Syracuse University, Wang was a teaching fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), where he has also been pursuing his doctorate since 2017. Wang’s scholarship and teaching concern history and theory of urban form, space and politics of the superblock, as well as architecture and the idea of the city in East Asia. Wang is the co-author of the book Urban Blocks and Grids: History, Technical Features, and Outcomes (with Peter Rowe, Scholars’ Press, 2019). He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming issue Commons of the New Geographies journal (Harvard University Press, 2021).
Wang is the recipient of the Peter G. Rowe Scholarship of Harvard University, and his research has been supported by the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD), the David Rockefeller Center of Harvard University, Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center, the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and the Harvard Asia Center.
Previously, Wang completed his master of architecture in urban design degree with distinction from Harvard GSD, where he was awarded the Urban Design Thesis Prize and the Clifford Wong Prize in Housing Design. He also holds a master of architecture degree from Rice University, where he won the Morris R. Pitman Award in Architecture and the Fondren Research Award. Wang received his bachelor of architecture degree from Harbin Institute of Technology in China, where he was the recipient of the National Scholarship by the Ministry of Education in China.
In addition to his academic experiences, Wang is the co-founder of Commons Office—a creative think tank and a research-minded design practice based in Boston and Shanghai. Prior to founding Commons Office, he practiced architecture internationally at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel; Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in New York; Bjarke Ingels Group in Copenhagen; WW Architecture in Houston; and Atelier Liu Yuyang Architects in Shanghai.
