Portfolio · 2024 – 2026

Selected Works

Four projects, one thread: space as a healing medium.
From a woven chair on campus, to a retail flagship in Qingdao, a four-storey atrium, and a mountain village in Zhejiang.
Each work tests how interior environments can soothe, carry culture, and reshape behaviour — with process documentation below.

WORKS

Furniture · Wellness Intervention · Campus

WOW — Alternative Furniture: the Heart Nook

A daily, low-pressure seat for people who are afraid of being seen.

WOW — woven interactive chairs installed in the teaching atrium

Overview

Problems targeted: social anxiety and "internal friction" among college students — the spotlight effect, fear of being judged, awkward silence.
Concept source: Morita therapy — "let nature take its course; do what should be done". Emotions are accepted and released instead of being fought.
Empty-chair technique: a real seat faces an empty symbolic seat, enabling a low-pressure dialogue between the user and their inner self.
Sliding tracks: users tune the physical distance between the twin chairs — a tactile metaphor for social distance and psychological boundaries.
Fence-style enclosure: carves a private, safe buffer inside the busy teaching atrium.
Unfinished woven cloth strips: users release emotions by wrapping and pulling — the loom, not the lock, is the ending.

WOW — the twin woven chairs with woven cloth strips — Fig. 01 — The twin chairs: frank facing, tunable distance, unfinished weaving.

Process — Concept & Prototype

Referenced Katie Truk — stretched nylon-and-wire sculptures: fragility against a rigid frame, a "flexible cage" between restraint and self-healing.
Form language: a shell that holds and a womb that protects; weaving that is deliberately left unfinished.
Prototype logic: the "unaccepted emotion" stays visible in the loose threads — an invitation to sit down and work through it.
Daily ritual: not a counselling room, but furniture that quietly performs therapy every single day.

WOW — social anxiety research collage, Moriarty therapy diagram — Fig. 02 — Research collage: spotlight effect, empty-chair dialogue, Morita therapy.

Process — Site & Behaviour Research

Site mapped: the open campus atrium — 6.5 hours of daily sunshine, free seating yet almost nobody sits there.
Peak flows: 30–40 people per surge at 07:40–08:10, 11:40–12:30, 14:00–14:40 and 17:50–18:30; off-peak only 5–10.
Observed gaps: no privacy, no interaction, constant noise — the atrium is "full but empty".
Design answer: a low-threshold furniture in the busiest path — healing hides in plain sight.
Wrapped into the story: the negative spotlight effect dissolves the moment a passer-by chooses the nook.

WOW — wireframe structure study — Structure study — wireframe shell.

WOW — sitting scenario rendering — Scenario — a quiet dialogue in the noise.

WOW — night view in the atrium — Atrium night view — a glowing heart nook.

Outcome

A daily, low-stress, localised psychological soothing space — not a counselling room.
Turns the campus into a public installation that accepts hidden conflicts and lets them be placed, folded and healed.
Reframes healing furniture as a "corner of the heart" — from object making to emotional infrastructure.

Retail · Multi-sensory Experience · Brand Narrative

Subliminal Retail Installation — Songmont

Incense smoke as the ground plan of a fragrance flagship.

Songmont — incense-washed flagship render

Overview

Design trigger: the burning of incense — fire's warmth, wood's texture, the drift and settle of smoke.
Brand roots: "the sky is far, the mountains high — pines at the foot of the mountain"; handmade leather, Oriental light luxury for women.
Translation: intangible aroma and smoke rhyme become architecture — spatial levels, curved display walls, hidden functional zones.
U-shaped journey: showcase → experience → immersion, with a semi-enclosed core zone for deep, subconscious engagement.
Private scenes: a coffee corner and a craft-traceability nook lengthen the stay and root the brand's culture.

Songmont — spatial concept collage, incense smoke as architecture — Fig. 03 — From smoke drift to plan: concept collage.

Process — Research & Concept

Market shift: consumption upgrades from material to emotional — scene and aesthetic consumption are taking over.
Urban desire: young city users seek a natural, solitary and healing habitat.
Site & brand: Qingdao flagship; market leader in the 1,000-yuan womens' handbag segment; founded in a Shanxi workshop in 2013.
Palette & identity: light green – beige – light brown; Chinese logo with Zen-style brushwork; pine branches as a natural route.
Sub-brand "Woods Lodge": five fragrance systems — "not to please others, but to nourish oneself".

Songmont — experiential retail journey zonings — Fig. 04 — The U-shaped journey: showcase, experience, immersion.

Process — Journey & Zoning

Flow design: a U-shaped loop that slows the body before slowing the mind.
Core experience zone: semi-enclosed, scent-diffused, emotionally "underground".
Functional camouflage: storage, service and fire-safety zones hidden inside curved walls.
Iteration: zoning sketches tested for dwell time, sightlines and culture transmission.

Brand wall — display as quiet poetry.

Songmont — flagship interior render — Core experience zone render.

Songmont — coffee corner detail — Private scenes — coffee and craft corners.

Outcome

A five-sense ritual that lets a retail store behave like a temple of scent.
Emotion, scene and aesthetics — not display — become the sales language.
The smoke rhyme becomes the plan itself: wayfinding as a slow exhale.

Spatial Installation · Psychology · Vertical Narrative

The Installation Journey — Jie Guang

Four storeys, four acts: from cognitive bias to self-acceptance.

Overview

Focus: cognitive bias in social anxiety — over-interpreting others' words, self-denial, the "negative spotlight effect".
Strategy: convert the brain's nervous response into space — from disorder to relaxation, floor by floor.
Four acts across the atrium: closed misunderstanding → attempt to break → letting go → self-acceptance.
Spatial tone: Morandi low-saturation palette — suppressed colours that gradually soothe, guided by light, shadow and low-threshold interactivity.
Empathy-first: ordinary visitors can also "experience the spotlight effect", turning design into social care.

Jie Guang — four-storey narrative model — Fig. 05 — The atrium model: one vertical journey, four psychological acts.

Process — Narrative Model

Protagonist storyboard: misreading, optional negative scenes, sleepless rumination — "what have I done?"
Story arc: dilemma → turning point → acceptance, mapped onto four physical floors.
Spatial language: bottom floor semi-enclosed, dim, curling inward; top floor open, bright, transparent.
Materials: wooden grilles, translucent membranes, soothing textures — each tuned to a stage of the cognitive journey.

Jie Guang — dimmed lower floor with grille enclosure — Fig. 06 — Act I: a dim, curling, self-enclosed misunderstanding.

Process — Atmosphere & Thresholds

Colour therapy: Morandi tones desaturate as the visitor ascends — colour as gradual emotional release.
Low-threshold devices: emotional-input interactions invite participation without forcing it.
"Other-perspective" simulators: let anxious visitors see how much attention they actually receive.
Iteration: tested device thresholds and pacing so guidance never turns into pressure.

Jie Guang — upper floor light and openness — Last act — open, bright, accepted.

Jie Guang — grille texture detail — Grille and membrane — texture as threshold.

Outcome

A "non-invasive, autonomous" healing choice for socially fearful people, open to the public.
Low threshold, high tolerance: any visitor can walk the journey and leave with a lighter reading of their own anxiety.
Translates abstract psychological errors into walkable, perceivable, interactive space.

Heritage · Adaptive Reuse · Soundscape Healing · Group Project (Lead)

Old Building Reuse — Hollow Village

Longyan Village: 800 years of mushroom culture, reborn as a five-sense sanctuary.

Hollow Village — masterplan over Longyan Village

Overview

Place: Longyan Village, Qingyuan, Zhejiang — 800 years of shiitake culture, the "cutting-flower" intangible heritage, and the legend of Wu Sangong.
Problem: a hollowed settlement — mostly elderly residents left behind, idle rammed-earth houses, shrinking vitality.
Strategy: rebuild the village skeleton with "mycelial spread" logic — paths fork like hyphae, buildings cluster like fruiting bodies.
Six healing zones: A Hidden (entry) · B Void (hearing) · C Soar (sight) · D Nourish (touch) · E Still (smell) · F Rest (taste) — a five-sense healing ecosystem.
My role: group leader — site selection, research, theme confirmation, progress supervision, mid-term presentation — plus my individual proposal: Zone B, the soundscape.

Hollow Village — mycelial masterplan diagram — Fig. 07 — The mycelial plan: paths like hyphae, buildings like fruiting bodies.

Process — Site & Culture Research

Geography: altitude 800–1000 m at the eastern foot of Baishanzu; subtropical humid monsoon climate.
Light & fog: fog-rich diffuse light — the exact conditions fungi evolved under.
Risk: geological hazards monitored; reuse restrains new disturbance.
Culture mapping: from natural mushroom and the Wu Sangong legend to temple fairs, mushroom opera and the "cutting-flower" technique.
Form translation: cap cracks → skin texture; gill folds → facade rhythm; cluster growth → organic massing and terraced layout.

Hollow Village — mushroom-capped pavilion structure — Fig. 08 — Fungus-inspired canopy: cap, gills and stem column.

Process — My Zone B: The Soundscape

Programme: a continuous forest trail linking stream-listening platforms, wind pavilions and meditation grounds.
Atrium sequence: the auditory experience hall wraps three sub-zones — ambience, immersion and interaction — in staggered walls that shape multidimensional white noise.
Biomimetic stem columns: 3D-printed fungal-stem columns, hollow inside, embedding polyethylene drainage pipes as sound conduits.
Collection caps: stainless steel connections and 3D-printed templates reserve collection interfaces for wind, streams and birdsong.
Closed loop: sounds gathered in the half-open collection garden travel through the structural columns into the experience hall — outside and inside become one.
Acoustic gate: security, medical and public-welfare units are positioned as noise-barrier gateway modules.

Hollow Village — sound collecting garden — Zone B — the half-open collection garden.

Hollow Village — auditory experience hall interior — Auditory natural experience hall.

Hollow Village — stem column sound conduit detail — Stem column — sound travels the structure.

Hollow Village — rammed earth wall reuse detail — Rammed-earth reuse detail.

Hollow Village — terraced landscape with cultivation — Terraced cultivation as landscape.

Zone B — Listen

Low-volume forest white noise — wind, leaves, a distant stream: the sound field of Zone B.
A 30-second ambient loop generated for this project from the site's acoustic character.

Soundscape · Zone B

Outcome

A regenerative wellness sanctuary: mushroom nutrition + intangible heritage + forest therapy in one loop.
Balances cultural preservation, ecological stewardship and community renewal — a replicable model for hollow-village revitalisation.
My Zone B proves the theory: a village can heal through its own quiet sounds.

Moving Image · Brief Requirements

From still frames to moving stories.

Two films produced for this portfolio: one long narrative film and one short teaser.
Footage and stills are drawn entirely from the portfolio and studio documentation.
Voiceover narration — recorded from a script written for the site, edited to sound natural rather than robotic.

LONG FILM · 02:31 The Full Journey

Two minutes and thirty-one seconds — the complete portfolio narrative with voiceover.
Walks through all four projects: WOW, Songmont, Jie Guang and Hollow Village.
Meets the brief's long-film requirement: one 2–3 minute piece telling the whole story.

SHORT FILM · 00:38 The Teaser

Thirty-eight seconds — under the brief's 40-second limit for short-form content.
Rapid cuts across the four projects, built to loop for quick sharing.
A reminder that design can care — even in under a minute.