EVAN SHIEH

Director, Founder

Download Evan's CV

Evan is an architect, urbanist, researcher and educator who is the founding partner & design director of Emergent Studio LLC. Founding the studio following almost a decade of professional working experience in the architecture & urban design fields, he has lived & worked bi-coastally in the US as well as internationally in Asia in both the private & public sectors.

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​In addition to directing Emergent, Evan is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture at New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) and a Lecturer in Architecture at Parsons the New School and the City College of New York (CCNY). He has previously taught full-time as an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia (UVA) and at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) as the 2019-20 Irving Innovation Teaching Fellow.

 

Evan's interdisciplinary research focuses on the spatial impact of mobility infrastructure and new mobility technologies on design, planning and other key aspects of the built environment. His design-research work, Autonomous Urbanism: Towards a New Transitopia, speculates on the latent & transformative impact autonomous vehicles will have on the future built environment of our cities, illustrated through the format of a graphic novel. His current research, the Future of Highways, examines key urban-renewal era highways ripe for urban & architectural reimagining and has been funded by a 2022 University of Virginia Library Research Grant.

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Throughout his career, he has lectured on his research at several academic institutions including at Yale University, the University of Michigan and others, and he has won several international design competitions. His research & design work has been curated & exhibited at venues around the world, including at the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism and the 2020 Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

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Evan was trained as an architect & urban designer at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design (GSD) where he holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction, and at the University of Southern California (USC) with a Bachelor of Architecture Cum Laude. He is the recipient of Harvard GSD's graduating Thesis Prize in Urban Design, the Prize for Academic Excellence in Urban Design (Highest GPA), the Award for Excellence in Urban Design, as well as the prestigious Irving Innovation Fellowship Grant which funded his research and post-graduate teaching at the GSD.

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​Prior to founding Emergent, Evan contributed to a range & scale of diverse projects (from large-scale district masterplanning, civic & cultural buildings, to residential & commercial projects) while working at various renowned design firms including most recently as an urban designer at Henning Larsen, a project lead & architect at UNStudio, and a researcher at NYC’s Department of City Planning, amongst several others. A selection of these professional works are listed below by scale: