Elina Chen

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	<title>Elina Chen</title>
	<link>https://elinachenyiying.com</link>
	<description>Elina Chen</description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 23:50:38 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Main Page</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Main-Page</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jun 2022 20:51:27 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

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	<item>
		<title>ABOUT</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/ABOUT</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 07 Jun 2022 20:51:26 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/ABOUT</guid>

		<description>
	
	
ABOUT
	Elina Chen (she/her) is a designer and writer from Wuxi, China. This page brings together her work in architecture, film, writing, drawing, publishing, and exhibition design. She is interested in how ideas move across disciplines, media, and scales—and hopes that these explorations may one day evolve into a design practice or pedagogy of their own. Her work investigates questions of ritual, memory, craft, labor, and cultural translation between premodern China and contemporary global culture.
Elina holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University and a post-professional Master of Architecture from Princeton University. 


For inquiry and collaboration:


	elinayiyingchen@gmail.com
@elina_chenyiying</description>
		
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	<item>
		<title>Space between Joints</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Space-between-Joints</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 17:30:54 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Space-between-Joints</guid>

		<description>

Space between Joints: 
Translating Timber Joinery 
into CLT Construction


A design proposal for Cross-Laminated Timber construction assembly.
Download PDF here.


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Design Proposal presented as part of the 2026 Inter-Intra Post-Professional Princeton Thesis Exhibition at a83 Gallery.


Prelude &#38;amp; Special Thanks
In the final review of a studio project in Fall 2023, French theorist and critic 
Françoise Fromonot posed a question that stayed with me as I began my graduate 
studies at the Princeton School of Architecture:&#38;nbsp;
Is CLT merely a substitute for concrete, or does it hold the potential for its own tectonic expression?

As I began my intellectural pursuit to this question, I encountered a series of teachers whose thinking 
and pedagogy profoundly shaped the project. I first met Professor Darell Fields in Fall 2024 through his pro-seminar, where 
we engaged in Hegelian dialectical analysis across topics such as ornament, site, tectonics, and plan composition. Traces of this intellectual methodology are embedded throughout my thesis: the aggregational logic of traditional Chinese timber joinery enters into dialogue with the “innovative” material of cross-
laminated timber, negates the simple domino replication of concrete structure, and produces a new tectonic language.In Spring 2025, I took a seminar on the theory of the senses with Professor Paize Keulemans in the East Asian Studies Department, where I researched the sensorial knowledge and bureaucratic systems of wood craftsmanship through texts such as the Luban Jing and the Yingzao Fashi. This research became one of the design manuals within the thesis, grounding the project in both historical craft knowledge and embodied sensory experience.
At the same time, I studied in studio with Professor Lyndon Neri and in seminar with Professor Spyros Papapetros, where ideas such as “reflective nostalgia” and “liminality as a third space” were explored and translated into architectural form. These philosophical frameworks helped me understand architecture not only as construction, but also as a medium for memory, transition, and emotional resonance.


I would also like to thank my collaborators and friends who supported me 
throughout this process.

Jianmin Min Shifu, a timber craftsman based in Suzhou, generously allowed me to document his factory and his life story on film, and he also built the dougong sculpture for this exhibition. Maximilien Chong Lee Shin helped me design and fabricate the manual table for this exhibition. Tianyu Zhang offered valuable advice on the technical development of the CLT house. Jeremiah Neri helped me 
capture the sensorial details of the timber factory and Jiamin Shifu’s life story in 
Suzhou through film.

This project would not have been possible without the financial support of the 
Princeton University Butler Travel Fellowship and the institutional support established under the directorship of former dean Mónica Ponce de León. I am grateful for thesis coordination by Jesse Reiser, Kira McDonald, and teaching assistant Ellen Wong.

I would also like to thank the incredible technical support from the shop team: Marie Baretsky, Bill Tansley, and John Hunter. Structural guidance from Xin Yuan, Guy Nordenson, and Sylvester Black. Writing critique from Cynthia Davidson.

Support and guidance of my professors from Rice University, Jesús Vassallo and Mark Wamble, as well as my friends and colleagues across both Rice and Princeton: 
Nino Chen, Loretta Koch, Pouya Khadem, Manus McCracken, Chad Miller, 
Mayra Monge, Qunyue Qi, Yilin Lin, Chandler Yicong Shan, and 
Chenchen Yan.

I would like to especially thank my advisor, Paul Lewis, who guided the design development of this thesis throughout the academic year beginning in Fall 2025. Every week, he arrived with his long sketching scroll, drawing through ideas with me and constantly pushing the project toward a clearer architectural 
resolution—translating the scale of joinery into the scale of building. His rational and systematic approach to design, and his insistence on pushing even the most ordinary architectural elements toward innovation, have deeply shaped my thinking throughout this thesis process. I believe his influence will continue to 
guide my research and design work long after Princeton.

And lastly, my parents, who have supported me endlessly from the other side of 
the planet.


From Timber to Joinery
Imagine a future city that doesn’t rise from concrete slabs or steel cages but from 
a choreography of wooden joints—an entire skyline clicking into place like a giant, life-sized puzzle. This project of joints begins with the oldest trick in the carpenter’s book: the tenon-and-mortise. An encounter of a “male” tenon with a 
“female” mortise. A fit between two pieces of materials. A union between Yin and 
Yang. For centuries it held up temples and palaces; it became its full expression in 
dougong—timber units stacked, layered, and cantilevered into a rhythm of brackets 
and arms.

In Chinese Architecture and Metaphor: Song Culture in the Yingzao Fashi Building Manual, Jiren Feng argues that the “flowering” metaphor embedded in the Yingzao Fashi reveals how Song-dynasty builders and literati understood timber construction not as inert structure, but as a living, organic system. Through botanical language—flowers, branches, leaves, petals—the dougong bracket set was conceived as a form that “blooms” through the extension of protruding 
arms. Structure, visual perception, and poetic language were deeply intertwined, embedding technical knowledge within broader literary, cosmological, and sensorial frameworks. Construction was not merely mechanical, but culturally and bodily legible.

&#60;img width="2989" height="477" width_o="2989" height_o="477" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4c2eb9f5d4c7de559302f7974f721b20eabea23f6f8663362ea229d64281b948/manual-1.jpg" data-mid="249899025" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4c2eb9f5d4c7de559302f7974f721b20eabea23f6f8663362ea229d64281b948/manual-1.jpg" /&#62;
 Tenon-and-Mortise Manual (榫卯之书), design by the author.


From Joinery to CLT

Today, in the United States and elsewhere globally, we encounter a new generation 
of engineered wood products—most notably cross-laminated timber (CLT)—that 
define what is commonly referred to as mass timber. Different from the traditional timber, where its strength and dimension are limited to the size of a tree and working hand tools, CLT offers structural strength, dimensional precision, 
and sustainability comparable to concrete and steel, while efficiently utilizing 
renewable resources and reducing carbon emissions and construction waste.

Yet despite its technical promise, CLT is often deployed as a direct substitute for concrete, following modernist logics such as the Dom-ino system, rather than advancing a distinct spatial or tectonic language rooted in wood itself.

Is CLT a substitute of concrete, or does it have a potential for its own tectonic expression? 
This thesis project, as an intellectual inquiry and response to this&#38;nbsp;question, asks: could a series of “new” joints be developed at the scale of CLT panels, not as nostalgic reproductions of traditional joinery, but as contemporary 
adaptations informed by aggregation, assembly, and material behavior? What new 
spatial sequences might emerge from the interaction between joint logic and the 
sheet-based materiality of CLT—between panel, connection, threshold, and space?
&#60;img width="2994" height="479" width_o="2994" height_o="479" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7e9288f717cb5bf2f32bfffb1f5315e8683859f05753ee3fe8da8519355092d9/manual-2.jpg" data-mid="249899026" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7e9288f717cb5bf2f32bfffb1f5315e8683859f05753ee3fe8da8519355092d9/manual-2.jpg" /&#62;
CLT Manual, design by the author.


A CLT House, joint inspired...
The project translates the tectonic logic of dougong into a contemporary CLT panel system. Here, 14' × 60' CLT wall panels function simultaneously as structural 
elements and spatial dividers, interlocking vertically through linear notch joints. Fabricated flat in the factory, transported by truck, and assembled on site, these 
panels form an efficient yet expressive construction system. A central vertical wall 
acts as the structural core, resisting lateral forces, stabilizing the overall assembly, and accommodating vertical circulation. Panels stack in two directions, expanding 
from 30 feet at the lower levels to 60 feet above, generating a stepped cantilever that provides shading and shelter at the ground plane. The notch joints stabilize 
this aggregation while simultaneously shaping rooms, thresholds, and voids that admit light, air, and spatial overlap.

In section, each 5-ply CLT wall panel notches 2 feet into adjacent panels on both sides, maintaining a clear 10-foot floor height for dwelling units. 3-ply CLT floor 
plates span between these walls, producing spaces that alternate between enclosed 
rooms and open-air platforms. The resulting 2-foot cavity beneath the floor plates 
accommodates mechanical ducts, forming a continuous plenum. Referencing Louis 
Kahn’s distinction between served and servant spaces, the spans between vertical 
walls vary between 3 and 10 feet, organizing compact service zones (restroom)&#38;nbsp;alongside larger living areas (living room / bedroom). The entire structure is clad in a double layer of cork insulation, which provides both thermal and acoustic 
performance while serving as an exterior finish.
&#60;img width="5704" height="3796" width_o="5704" height_o="3796" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/25f60ece8708df8b0dc22273b96deec93449fb835e3cd6b25aa87a13189b1143/Model---Study-Model---Joint.jpg" data-mid="249898971" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/25f60ece8708df8b0dc22273b96deec93449fb835e3cd6b25aa87a13189b1143/Model---Study-Model---Joint.jpg" /&#62;“Joint” at different scales: 
(from left to right) the house at 1’=1/2”, the house at 1’=1/8”, the dougong at half scale.


Throughout the thesis process, multiple iterations of formal assembly and spatial organization were explored. In the final scheme, the system accommodates three dwelling units, articulated through subtle level changes and intermediate spaces that mediate between them. These units interlock through the joints of the CLT 
panels, establishing layered visual connections and spatial relationships that produce varying degrees of privacy.Circulation is organized around a central vertical core, which anchors movement through the building. From this core, one enters a shared public platform, leading into the first unit, where spaces unfold sequentially from service corridor to living room to bedroom. On the second level, a similar sequence begins with a public platform, followed by living room, service corridor, bedroom, and an exterior patio.
The third level introduces a public corridor overlooking the living space below, 
before transitioning into living room, service corridor, and bedroom. The sequence culminates at the uppermost level with a rooftop garden, completing the vertical progression from collective to intimate and back to collective space.
In this CLT joint assembly, rooms slip between floors; voids emerge where panels almost, but not quite, touch. Light and air filter through these seams. Within this 
quiet choreography of timber, dwellings begin to take shape—duplexes, fourplexes, collectives—each defined not only by enclosure, but by the spaces in between.


&#60;img width="5581" height="3713" width_o="5581" height_o="3713" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1ada1a6edba3f33d641186d6d11f7dee87da230d3dc5645a3b930761edd35d43/5.png" data-mid="249899650" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1ada1a6edba3f33d641186d6d11f7dee87da230d3dc5645a3b930761edd35d43/5.png" /&#62;Model View.


Plywood Model Assembly Video.


A return to the sensorial affinity for wood...

Returning to the origin of this investigation—the human sensorial affinity for&#38;nbsp;wood—the project reclaims material as both structural and spatial. Through an 
attentiveness to grain, joint, and assembly, it recalls ancient knowledge not as nostalgia or mystification, but as a living intelligence embedded in making. It resides in the tactile world of the timber factory in Suzhou, in the careful crafting 
and painting of dougong, in drawings and manuals that both contest and resonate, forming a dialogue across time and space. It lives in a table built with a friend, a 
series of drawings that articulate the potential buildability of this project, and in a 
model made possible through the technical knowledge of the SoA shop staff.

Beginning with Françoise’s question and an early interest in Heidegger’s reflections on building and dwelling, this project arrives at a simple realization: wood is&#38;nbsp;no longer concealed beneath systems of abstraction, but emerges instead as an 
expressive, legible, and generative medium.

In its assembly, architecture regains a tactile presence—one that is technically rigorous, environmentally responsible, and experientially rich.
&#60;img width="16000" height="9000" width_o="16000" height_o="9000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/85850359eb062e80f582ecd7be4f903597afe5ddf6043190e614dc88f3660fa8/View-of-Common-Area.jpg" data-mid="249899621" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/85850359eb062e80f582ecd7be4f903597afe5ddf6043190e614dc88f3660fa8/View-of-Common-Area.jpg" /&#62;
View of Common Area.

&#60;img width="16000" height="9000" width_o="16000" height_o="9000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/62a7af596da6913a8849ea15e35e88d496487e0dc4a5a8de14a7e8514d00fa59/View-into-Dining-Room.jpg" data-mid="249899617" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/62a7af596da6913a8849ea15e35e88d496487e0dc4a5a8de14a7e8514d00fa59/View-into-Dining-Room.jpg" /&#62;View into Dining Room.

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View of Living Room into Bathroom Corridor.

&#60;img width="10825" height="6092" width_o="10825" height_o="6092" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/ed8a9230736d1cfdce737650c6286b1ebe151754b3c6cba0c1a01a4a09a198dd/View-from-the-Bathtub-into-Bedroom.jpg" data-mid="249899616" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/ed8a9230736d1cfdce737650c6286b1ebe151754b3c6cba0c1a01a4a09a198dd/View-from-the-Bathtub-into-Bedroom.jpg" /&#62;View from the Bathtub into Bedroom.
Fall 2025-Spring 2026, independent work. Thesis&#38;nbsp;Advisor: Paul Lewis.
&#60;img width="7200" height="21600" width_o="7200" height_o="21600" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3209338a50cfad656ad1e5d4f71ab75330ed19a6922b6579c4eba778dd83ef42/Tectonic-Assembly-of-CLT-House.jpg" data-mid="249899551" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3209338a50cfad656ad1e5d4f71ab75330ed19a6922b6579c4eba778dd83ef42/Tectonic-Assembly-of-CLT-House.jpg" /&#62;


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Left image: (1) Tectonic Assembly of CLT House.

Above images:
(2) Section through units.
(3) Section through core.
(4-6) Floor Plans.

Related pages: Documentary film: From Timber to Touch: the Living Knowledge of Wood Joinery in China.Research paper: Embodiment of Sensory Knowledge in Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi.</description>
		
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		<title>Suzhou Timber Factory</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Suzhou-Timber-Factory</link>

		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 21:37:30 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Suzhou-Timber-Factory</guid>

		<description>

	
从木材到触感：中国榫卯工艺的感官智慧 From Timber to Touch: the living knowledge of wood joinery in China
A video essay on the life story of a Suzhou-based timber craftsman and his factory, composed as part of my thesis exhibition at a83 Gallery for Princeton School of Architecture.

Interview team: Bin Chen, Elina Chen

Camera by Jeremiah Neri

Edit by Elina Chen

Special thanks to Craftsman Jianmin Min 闽师傅


Summer 2025.&#38;nbsp;


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Related pages: Design proposal:&#38;nbsp;Space between Joints: Translating Timber Joinery into CLT Construction.Research paper:&#38;nbsp;Embodiment of Sensory Knowledge in Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi.</description>
		
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		<title>Luban Jing &#38; Yingzao Fashi</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Luban-Jing-Yingzao-Fashi</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 23:50:38 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Luban-Jing-Yingzao-Fashi</guid>

		<description>From Touch to Text: Embodiment of Sensory Knowledge in Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi
In the history of Chinese architecture, Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi represent two distinct yet interrelated epistemologies of building knowledge. Luban Jing, often attributed to the mythical craftsman Lu Ban, is a vernacular, orally transmitted manual rooted in the embodied practices of artisan communities. Circulating widely in woodblock editions and workshop memories, it presents a world of craft-based, sensorial engagement, infusing practical techniques with folklores, taboos, superstitions, and geomanty (fengshui). Luban Jing not only presents epistemological knowledge of woodworking techniques, but also reflects the everyday labor and the cosmological frameworks of building and dwelling.
In contrast, Yingzao Fashi, a technical treatise compiled by Li Jie in 1103 under the supervision of the Northern Song court, institutionalized architectural knowledge within a bureaucratic, literate, and state-sanctioned framework. Intended to standardize imperial construction projects, it codifies dimensions, material usage, and procedures with precise drawings and notations. This results in the abstraction of the tactility aspects of craftsmanship in favor of legibility and control.
Nevertheless, the compilation of Luban Jing, which took place during the Ming or Qing dynasty—after Yingzao Fashi had been written—reflects a broader phenomenon observable from the Song dynasty onward: a growing tendency toward the explicit formulation and codification of everyday rituals. This trend was also evident in the increasing publication and circulation of books on almanacs and geomancy. This shift invites the question: what forms of sensorial knowledge are lost when artisanal, hands-on practices are translated into written, systematic codification? How is touch—perhaps the most tacit, ephemeral, and least historicized of all the senses—represented or omitted in Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi? What do these differing sensorial logics reveal about the power dynamics between vernacular and institutionalized building expertise, the stratification of labor, and the cultural values assigned to embodied versus abstract knowledge?
The first part of this paper examines how sensorial knowledge is transmitted through rituals, spells, and taboos in Luban Jing. Multisensory experience is integral to the building practice, where the chanting of rhymes, offerings of wine, musical performances, and the affixing of amulets to key architectural elements are inseparable from the act of construction itself. The second part contrasts this transmission of sensorial knowledge with the formalized language of Yingzao Fashi, in which ci 詞, or lyric poetry, influences the development of architectural nomenclature. The categorization and codification of joinery types enable craftsmen to replicate construction techniques with precision across the empire. Yet such standardization also results in the omission of sensorial and everyday ritual from the textual record. The final section analyzes the political tensions embedded in these two texts through the visual and conceptual representation of joinery. In Luban Jing, joinery is shown in relation to the body, tools, and the materiality of wood; in Yingzao Fashi, joinery is presented through precise measurements, fixed terminology, and standardized representation.
As Constance Classen observes in The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch, the history of touch involves not merely a search for experience, but also a search for meaning. By placing Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi in parallel, the paper aims to understand the cultural values that shaped the sensory life of pre-modern Chinese society—how people built and dwelled in particular ways to sense and make sense of the world around them. At stake are not just methods of construction, but the broader power structures that underpin knowledge production itself: the built environment is both a result of physical labor and a terrain of epistemological contestation.


Rituals, Spells, and Taboos: the Transmission of Sensorial Knowledge in Luban Jing

While Luban Jing contains practical instructions on the construction of houses, furniture, and tools, its magical-ritual elements—such as incantations, protective charms, and taboos—are not peripheral but central to its epistemology. As Klaas Ruitenbeek notes in the preface to his monograph, Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China, “In the building field, technique, ritual and magic were linked closely from the beginning.” This inseparability reflects an ontological view in which the physical act of making is inseparable from the cosmological and moral order. Unlike bureaucratic manuals such as Yingzao Fashi, Luban Jing emerges from a pedagogical structure grounded in embodied apprenticeship and oral transmission. Knowledge is passed down through gesture, repetition, and bodily proximity, not solely through literacy or textual instruction.

As Ruitenbeek suggests, Luban Jing was treasured “at least as much by a carpenter who could not read as by a colleague who could,” because it encapsulated the accumulated wisdom of the trade, bound to the figure of Lu Ban, the patron saint of carpenters. Lu Ban’s mythic elevation to divine status reveals the syncretic nature of vernacular craft knowledge, where Taoist cosmology, folk ritual, and geomantic principles are indivisible with artisanal labor. In this worldview, carpentry is not merely a technical skill but a sacred mediation between the earthly and the divine.

Taoism, as developed in the Tao Te Ching by Laozi, offers a philosophical basis for this integration of building, dwelling, and ritual. Laozi’s verse on skillful living—“The good of work is skill, and of action, timing”—laid a foundation for the builders to understand and achieve a harmonious relationship with the natural world. In Taoist thought, building is an extension of wu wei (non-forcing action), a calibrated responsiveness to the flows of qi (vital energy), wind, and water. In Juan One section 31 the method of the water level, Luban Jing specifically referenced another Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi, quoting: “The night is tranquil, the water is level.” To construct a still-level stand on top of water, carpenters must find the right time during the night to put the wooden post upright and press the cross-shaped foot, making an explicit connection between the act of building with nature’s temporal rhythm.

Such attunement underlies the development of fengshui (geomancy), which, though traceable to early imperial times, gained increasing prominence in the Song and Yuan dynasties and has remained a guiding force in Chinese architectural practice. Geomancy, in this context, is not simply superstition but a ritualized form of environmental and spatial ethics. It reflects the human desire to align built form among the “Four Greats” of Dao, heaven, earth, and man. For the vernacular builder, measuring, cutting, and assembling timber were acts embedded in this order—tools might be inscribed with spells, and measurements need to be chosen according to cosmological tables. Thus, Luban Jing captures not only techniques of joinery but also functions as a living archive of sensorial knowledge involved in the execution process, standing in contrast to the rationalized, textually mediated system of Yingzao Fashi.

In Luban Jing, auspicious days for specific building activities—such as felling trees, laying foundations, constructing furniture, or installing doors—are meticulously detailed, reflecting a worldview in which construction is inextricably tied to cosmological cycles. These practices are not merely supplementary; they articulate an intentional, prescribed, and sacred order of gestures, words, and objects that together shape the ontology of building. For example, Section 29 of Juan One prescribes that before hoisting the right support-pole, the practitioner must present a prayer to the immortal master Lu Ban, hailed as the “Lord of the Earth, the Second of the Three Worlds.” The accompanying incantation reads:

“The day is favorable, the hour is fine. Heaven and earth lay open and wide. In a censer made of gold, Five fragrant incense sticks are burning. Therefore, We reverently invite the messenger, provided with tally, in charge of this hour, this day, this month, this year. Humbly we hope for his arrival, as we have a request concerning a certain affair.”

The prayer is followed by libations offered three times, accompanied by poetic recitation and music performance. This ritual underscores the multisensory nature of vernacular craftsmanship: it involves the taste of wine, the touch of the offering, and the sound of drums, zithers, and oral poetry. As one passage chants:

 “Man and the gods rejoice That favours are spread all around. In order to enjoy riches and rank We offer our wine cup for the second time. Calamities will be exterminated forever, A hundred blessings will be conferred from above. We shall enjoy a long life without end.”

The multisensory rituals embedded in the carpentry prayers align with what Walter J. Ong describes the “additive, aggregative, and participatory” nature of oral cultures, where knowledge is not abstracted or decontextualized, but grounded in bodily repetition and communal resonance. The physical act of offering libations—handling vessels, pouring wine, striking drums—situates building practice within a haptic-sacral framework, where the hands are engaged not merely as instruments of labor but also medium for cosmological negotiation.

In the final chapter of Luban Jing, a series of secret charms and magical devices are both explained and illustrated, underscoring the significance of ritual in ensuring the success of construction practices. These incantations—particularly those directed at measuring tools—serve to ward off inaccuracy and misfortune, revealing the inseparable relationship between technical precision and spiritual belief. Mediating among body, tool, and material, such practices suggest that touch, as a mode of sensing and knowing, is not merely technical but cosmologically charged. One example is the use of a ritual amulet, or fu (符), a talisman typically inscribed with cinnabar ink and affixed to significant architectural elements for protection. Section 45 of Luban Jing describes the ritual process:

“This amulet must be written with cinnabar. It is pasted on the ridge-pole. In the black dot the name of the family is written. After it has been written it is covered up with ink. When pasting the amulet it is held in the left hand. At the moment of pasting, no chatting by outsiders is allowed. Only after the amulet has been pasted up and one has come down the ladder, are tea and rice arranged and paper money burnt, since then the Blue Dragon has been soothed. Next, the assembled deities of the family altar are dedicated, and the god of the soil and the kitchen god are invited to their respective seats. Thereupon the True Words to Dedicate the house altar are pronounced.”

&#60;img width="324" height="564" width_o="324" height_o="564" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d17c26568df410d8d63a9740fb15af12961d5a6abe0a75fc8910187eedee0087/image.png" data-mid="249950321" border="0" data-scale="67" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/324/i/d17c26568df410d8d63a9740fb15af12961d5a6abe0a75fc8910187eedee0087/image.png" /&#62;
Fig.1, illustration of the amulet inserted as part of the manuscript. Luban Jing, Secret Charms and Magical Devices, section 45.

The care and ritual sequence involved in this tactile-architectural procedure—such as holding the amulet in the left hand, maintaining silence during its placement, and offering food, incense, and music—demonstrates that building embodies layers of sensorial knowledge even before materials are assembled into physical form. The integration of orality and touch sustains an intimate relationship between the builder’s sensory agency and the tools and materials they manipulate. This dynamic process aligns with Tim Ingold’s notion of “thinking through making,” in which knowledge emerges through the active engagement between hand, material, and environment. Rather than following prescribed plans or detached blueprints, the maker responds in real time to the affordances and resistances of the material world.


	Ordering Craft: Literati and Court Mediation in the Language of Yingzao Fashi
In contrast to the ritual spells, rhymes, and mnemonic chants documented in Luban Jing, Yingzao Fashi presents a formalized nomenclature and codified system for describing architectural components, particularly dougong (bracket arms). This shift reflects not merely a difference in medium—oral versus written—but a broader epistemological divergence between tactile, embodied knowledge and textual, bureaucratic abstraction. As Jiren Feng observes in Chinese Architecture and Metaphor: Song Culture in the Yingzao Fashi Building Manual, the compilation of Yingzao Fashi illustrates a close collaboration between architectural professionals and literati scholars. This partnership fosters a shared architectural vocabulary that aligns technical craft with the literary and administrative roles of the Song elite. Unlike Luban Jing, where the text encodes oral performance and bodily apprenticeship, Yingzao Fashi transforms experiential building into systematized, formalized language suitable for large-scale dissemination and state control.
The presence of ci 词, or lyric poetry, in the architectural vocabulary of Yingzao Fashi suggests a shared cultural terrain between craftsmen and literati during the Song dynasty, contrasting with the vernacular, magical-ritual worldview Luban Jing is centered around. As Jiren Feng notes, the naming of structural elements such as linggong 令栱 and mangong 慢栱 reflects not only their physical attributes but also the poetic classification of lyric forms—lingci (composed to shorter melodies with fewer characters) and manci (composed to longer melodies and contain more words). This poetic classification, Feng argues, permeates architectural terminology, where the structural form of linggong and mangong metaphorically mirror the short and long melodic forms. Such linguistic transference suggests that craftsmen were familiar with the literati conventions of their time, blurring the boundaries between the technical and literary expertise.
While it remains unclear whether craftsmen actively composed or recited ci in the act of construction, the linguistic sophistication in Yingzao Fashi that bridges elite and manual domains marks a departure from the embodied, oral transmission found in Luban Jing, where rhymed spells, chants, and taboos are direct instructional tools. In its preface, the compiler Li Jie emphasizes the scientific and moral order underlying architectural regulation:
“I have heard that erecting the upper beams and laying the lower foundations reflects the time of 'Great Strength' (as in the I Ching); establishing correct positions and orientations embodies the rites of Grand Peace. In ancient times, Gonggong was appointed under Emperor Shun, and the Grand Artificer originated in the Han dynasty—each having its official responsibilities, and each following procedural standards.
At present, when great building projects are undertaken, we aspire to construct grand, flying-eaved halls. Yet, the hands that hew the wheels sometimes fail to capture true form; and the officials supervising labor lack skill in multiple trades. They do not understand how to match materials to their appropriate proportions, and sometimes they double measurements to make things longer. Bad habits accumulate over time, standards become slack, and inspections are insufficient. Without the penetrating discernment required to manage the Three Palaces, how could one possibly renew the regulations appropriate for a new era?”
In Yingzao Fashi, architecture is framed as a domain of rational governance, divorced from geomancy, superstition, and folk ritual. By codifying construction practices into diagrams, measuring tables, and precise terminologies, the manual functions as a tool of statecraft that disciplines labor and inserts imperial authority into the built environment. The absence of sensory language in Yingzao Fashi is not a neutral stylistic choice but a political one. As Michel Foucault theorizes in Discipline and Punish, state power operates through standardization and normalization: “The power of normalization imposes homogeneity; but it individualizes by making it possible to measure gaps, to determine levels, to fix specialties and to render the differences useful by fitting them one to another.” In architectural terms, this entails eliminating deviations in measurement, inconsistencies in material quality, and improvisation in bodily technique. The manual’s formalized and bureaucratic language reinforces this agenda.
Dougong (bracket arms) in Yingzao Fashi are classified into five primary types—huagong 花栱, nidaogong 泥道栱, guazigong 瓜子栱, linggong 令栱, and mangong 慢栱—each named and valued according to its structural role and aesthetic function. Timber is graded by quality, and specific numbers of dougong units and precise measurements are prescribed for different architectural typologies, including palace halls, towers, pavilions, outer eaves, and intercolumniation spaces. For each change in timber grade, exact length adjustments are made to ensure uniform quality and performance. The formal naming of each bracket type allows craftsmen to identify structural components with accuracy, while the quantification of materials and labor serves to standardize construction across the empire.
In this system, the craftsman’s judgment is subordinated to the text; the body becomes a mechanical executor rather than a site of interpretive knowledge. This stands in stark contrast to the oral transmission of Luban Jing, which resists codification by embedding architectural knowledge in embodied gestures, oral chants, and ritual practices. While Yingzao Fashi enforces legibility and replication, Luban Jing maintains agency through the sensorium and the esoteric body, articulating an indigenous epistemology outside the realm of imperial control.
Joinery as a Site of Epistemological Contestation: Sensory Embodiment vs. Bureaucratic Codification
Wood joinery, a highly skilled and tactile domain of timber construction, mediates an intimate relationship between the body, tools, and the materiality of wood. As a visible marker of craftsmanship, joinery reveals not only the quality of materials and the trace of manual labor, but also encodes cultural values and epistemological frameworks specific to a building culture. Beyond its structural function that organizes parts into a whole, joinery serves as a site where technical precision intersects with symbolic meaning. Understanding how joinery is classified, illustrated, and represented in the texts of Luban Jing and Yingzao Fashi is therefore essential for uncovering the competing interests that inform two divergent epistemologies of building—one grounded in embodied, ritualized knowledge, the other in codified, bureaucratic abstraction. These contrasting frameworks expose the ideological stakes in how material practices are conceptualized, transmitted, and regulated.
In Luban Jing, joinery is embedded within a cosmological and ritual framework, presented not as an isolated technical object but through its integration with bodily orientation and material interaction. Certain joints must not be executed on inauspicious days, and specific tools require charms or incantations to prevent misfortune. In the text, the physical act of cutting and joining wood is depicted as illustration in tandem with textual instructions, emphasizing the sensorial engagement of construction. Unlike Yingzao Fashi, where joinery is rendered in isolation—categorized in rational orders and annotated with precise measurements—Luban Jing consistently includes the human figure in its illustrations. The craftsman's body serves as an interpretive site: chanting rhymes, manipulating tools, and performing rituals that ensure both the structural integrity and spiritual dimensions of building. Physical touch and oral performance are not incidental; they are central to the building culture, elevated through vivid depictions that reject the abstraction of purely functional diagrams.
An example of sensorial depiction appears in Juan One, section 76 of Luban Jing, where the construction of a princely palace is rendered through a combination of technical illustration and embodied action. In the lower right corner of the image, a craftsman is shown bent over a timber bench, meticulously engaged in the physical act of woodworking. His posture—bending forward while steadying the wood with one hand and staining it with a brush held in the other—reflects the intimate coordination between body, tool, and material. A basket nearby contains chisels, ink brushes, saws, and hammers, with additional tools scattered on the ground, emphasizing the tactile immediacy of tools that mediate between craftsmen’s hands and the construction product.

&#60;img width="655" height="917" width_o="655" height_o="917" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/09729d3174dc44b50c4c1096021a48f441ab1a9dbec42d2d7a37e8ce2865e0da/image.png" data-mid="249950320" border="0" data-scale="93" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/655/i/09729d3174dc44b50c4c1096021a48f441ab1a9dbec42d2d7a37e8ce2865e0da/image.png" /&#62;
Fig. 2. Craftsman cutting and brushing wood for the princely palace. Luban Jing, juan 1, section 76.

	Behind the craftsman, the palace itself rises in a sectional-axonometric view, revealing its skeletal framework and structural logic. The illustration exposes the joinery at key junctures: columns are shown emerging from the foundational cornerstones, demarcating the transition between earth and architecture—a moment of ontological significance in premodern Chinese construction. The grain of the wood is visually articulated in cross-section, highlighting not only material specificity but also the procedural layering of components, particularly within the complex dougong bracket system .
The architectural description provides further structural detail: 
“The upper tier of the roof has five purlins, the subsidiary roof in front has three purlins. In the upper part of the building, sheng blocks, gong brackets and cofferings are fitted. The distance between the coffered ceiling and the floor is fifty-three chi. In the palace hall are seven times seven, or fourty-nine columns. The remaining need not be recorded again; they follow in accordance with the smaller or larger scale of the building. The two central columns are octagonal. They serve as supports for the ridge-pole. At the back are no doors; (instead,) large, thick boards are mortised into the jin columns. At the front are no doors, but vermilion curtains are suspended.”
As the text notes, “The remaining [columns] need not be recorded again; they follow in accordance with the smaller or larger scale of the building.” This formulaic modularity echoes the flexibility of oral-ritual instruction found in Luban Jing. Craftsmen modify their construction process according to different scales and sizes, instead of following a strict set of guidelines precise to decimals in Yingzao Fashi. By encoding the sensory into visual form, Luban Jing affirms touch and orality as medium of knowledge transformation, synthesizing architectural logic with bodily engagement. The juxtaposition of physical labor and their production of material structure preserves a distinctly haptic, intersubjective, and spiritual relationship among wood, human, and spatial product.
By contrast, Yingzao Fashi presents joinery as a standardized and abstracted system, drawn out of context from the ritual, cosmology, or sensory practice. Joinery is rendered not as a lived, embodied process but as a rationalized series of measurements, diagrams, and taxonomies designed for replication and regulation. The manual employs meticulously labeled diagrams and mathematical ratios to define each major joinery type, breaking down structures into modular units based on the cai-fen 材分 system—a proportional standard that governs all dimensions of architectural components. These measurements are highly precise, often extending to decimal increments, and are used to control every aspect of construction from the grade of timber to the width, depth, and placement of mortises and tenons.

The section on da mu zuo zhi du tu yang 大木作制度图样 (“Standardized Diagrams for Timber Framing Techniques”) includes a range of graphic representations to visualize the systematization of joinery. These illustrations use plan views, sectional drawings, and axonometric projections to convey material hierarchies and structural relationships. Through such visual languages, the manual classifies bracket sets, beam placements, and column joints with analytical clarity, aiming for reproducibility rather than intuitive engagement. Each component is not only named but also measured, calculated, and indexed to specific building types and timber qualities, ensuring architectural precision during assembling.
An example of this rational codification can be found in Diagram 14 of Yingzao Fashi, titled jiao ge pu zuo gong ang dou deng suo yong mao kou 绞割铺作栱昂抖等所用卯口 (“Mortise Types Used in Twisting, Cutting, and Assembling Components such as Brackets, Arms, and Struts”). This diagram presents a specialized taxonomy of joinery techniques essential to large-scale timber construction. It outlines a series of mortise-and-tenon joints used in assembling critical architectural elements within the dougong (bracket arms) system—specifically gong 栱 (the bracket arms), ang 昂 (inclined struts), and dou 抖 (diagonal braces). The 卯口 (maokou, mortise openings) are carefully designed to accommodate uniquely shaped and sloped components that require jiaoge 绞割—a method involving intricate cutting and twisting of timber at oblique angles.
Different categories of dougong, including variations of linggong令栱&#38;nbsp; and mangong慢栱 , are cataloged and illustrated with precise dimensional data. The layered arrangement of these members demands a high degree of craftsmanship to ensure accurate alignment and tight interlocking, especially where angled joints converge. By standardizing these mortise types through labeled diagrams and proportional measurements, Yingzao Fashi transforms what was once a tactile, interpretive craft into a bureaucratically regulated system—one where visual abstraction and mathematical calibrations prevail embodied knowledge and ritual performance.

&#60;img width="669" height="837" width_o="669" height_o="837" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/da49a882fbdef78f2d013f719192494768f653a0eb66ecf7dabe6aa19be3a26a/image.png" data-mid="249950319" border="0" data-scale="97" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/669/i/da49a882fbdef78f2d013f719192494768f653a0eb66ecf7dabe6aa19be3a26a/image.png" /&#62;
Fig.3, da mu zuo zhi du tu yang 大木作制度图样 (“Standardized Diagrams for Timber Framing Techniques”) diagram 14 绞割铺作栱昂抖等所用卯口 (“Mortise Types Used in Twisting, Cutting, and Assembling Components such as Brackets, Arms, and Struts”).&#38;nbsp; Liang Sicheng, Annotated Yingzao Fashi by Li Jie, 391.
The epistemological shift from embodied and ritual practice, as reflected in Luban Jing, to the textualized and rationalized system of Yingzao Fashi points to a political tension between vernacular knowledge and institutional authority. The compilation of Luban Jing during the Ming dynasty—after centuries of oral transmission and in dialogue with earlier formalized texts like Yingzao Fashi—demonstrates that vernacular building traditions and magical-ritual practices continued to persist despite the growing influence of state-sponsored architectural codification. Rather than being completely overwritten by institutional authority, these practices found ways to adapt and endure, using the written word as a vessel for preserving the embodied knowledge of touch, gesture, and memory. In this way, Luban Jing stands as a testament to the resilience and adaptability of non-institutional knowledge systems within a context of increasing regulation and centralization.
Compiled under bureaucratic control, Yingzao Fashi functions as a tool of statecraft: its specific nomenclature borrowed from the literati, its standardized diagrams of architectural elements, and its precise annotated measurements all serve to regulate labor and disseminate royal architectural aesthetics across the empire. The manual is not merely a technical document but an instrument of state control. Labor is abstracted into a compliant set of architectural codes. Within this context, joinery becomes a mechanism for maintaining political order rather than a site of sensorial interpretation.
Luban Jing suggests an alternative epistemological model in which tactile and oral knowledge is not only preserved but also transmitted through textual means. Unlike Yingzao Fashi, which presents a rationalized and bureaucratically sanctioned building system, Luban Jing retains the sensorial, ritualistic, and vernacular dimensions of craftsmanship. Through blending practical techniques with symbolic meanings, ritual procedures, and body representations, Luban Jing reveals a world where architecture is entangled with cosmology.
In contemporary building culture, wooden joinery—such as the dougong (bracket arms)—is often treated as a scenographic symbol of Chinese architecture, reduced to a visual motif that evokes nostalgia for a pre-modern past. Yet, when examined through the senses—touch, vision, and orality—the dougong reveals itself not merely as an aesthetic element but as a manifestation of lived experience and embodied knowledge. This sensorial dimension of joinery calls for reevaluation, reimagination, and revival within contemporary architectural practice. Rather than reducing architecture to textual abstraction or visual spectacle under capitalist production, evaluating the sensorial knowledge embedded in texts such as Yingzao Fashi and Luban Jing invites a return to architecture as a tactile, performative, and materially engaged discipline—one once rooted in the body, in craft, and in sensory encounter.
Bibliography
Classen, Constance. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
Feng, Jiren. Chinese Architecture and Metaphor: Song Culture in the Yingzao Fashi Building Manual. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2012.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2013.
Liang Sicheng, Annotated Yingzao Fashi by Li Jie. Beijing: Science Press, 1980.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routledge, 1982.
Ruitenbeek, Klaas. Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century Carpenter’s Manual Lu Ban Jing. Sinica Leidensia 28. Leiden: Brill, 1993.

This research paper is conducted as part of seminar work on Theory of Senses taught by prof. Paize Keulemans.

Spring 2025.


Related pages:Documentary film: From Timber to Touch: the Living Knowledge of Wood Joinery in China.

Design proposal: Space between Joints: Translating Timber Joinery into CLT Construction.


</description>
		
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	<item>
		<title>Dream Projector</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Dream-Projector</link>

		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:02:17 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Dream-Projector</guid>

		<description>
	
The Dream Projector


Special thanks to seminar teacher Darell Fields.
Spring 2026, independent work.Download PDF here.

	
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</description>
		
	</item>
		
		
	<item>
		<title>Fragments of Cities 2025</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Fragments-of-Cities-2025</link>

		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:45:28 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Fragments-of-Cities-2025</guid>

		<description>


Fragments of Cities 2025
The view from the window


Signs from the street


Exit


A letter to Le Corbusier


Chartreuse 55°


An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris New York


Excavating the Mountain


On Demolition


A return to the Woods


Metro Line, Paris


Manifesto for a City of Joints
Special thanks to seminar teacher and editor Cynthia Davidson.

Fall 2025, independent work.
Download PDF here.

	
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	<item>
		<title>Unfolding Labor</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Unfolding-Labor</link>

		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 22:44:17 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Unfolding-Labor</guid>

		<description>


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	Unfolding Labor on Mott St 


Unfolding Labor on Mott St reimagines utilitarian spaces related to the lifecycle of fabric as sites of artistic inquiry and social gathering. This project challenges the historical repression of domestic labor—washing, folding laundry, making, and cleaning dishes—traditionally tied to the feminine role of maintaining household order, by bringing these acts to the forefront of architectural configuration. At the same time, the project speaks to the history of fabric-making in Manhattan’s Chinatown, where immigrant wives sustained their households through garment production. Generations of immigrants, not limited to Chinese immigrants, but also Jewish, Polish, and Italian immigrant housewives, turned part of their domestic setting into fabric workshops. However, due to globalization and the aftermath of 9/11, union factories that once operated within tenement apartments were gradually displaced—either moved outside Manhattan or relocated beyond the U.S. Part of the cultural narrative that speaks to the resilience of the productive and reproductive labor that took place in a domestic setting in Chinatown is concealed and lost.

The project aims to revive this narrative and re-establish the social significance of domestic labor through spatial organization and tectonic expression. It challenges the traditional notion of laundry spaces—either as laundromats, public facilities used solely for utilitarian purposes with little room for social interaction, or as hidden appliances tucked away in domestic closets, concealing the labor, time, and care involved. By redefining the laundromat as a communal, participatory environment that fosters interaction through tactile materials, interactive objects, and opportunities for collective creativity, the project elevates the mundane into a space of cultural and social exchange.

The tactility of fabric generates a dual rhetoric: first, as a means of restoring and actively engaging with labor through the embodied practices of weaving and washing; second, as a tectonic expression in architecture that both encloses and partitions space. Fabric is integrated into both the exterior façade and interior spatial screens - both incorporating a weaving pattern. An exterior screen system is developed as the facade of 41, 53, and 55 Mott Street and storefronts of the site, creating thresholds of entry and moments of visual revelation through exposed laundry. A drying rack system is embedded within this exterior screen, inviting people to bring and dry their clothes in public—a particularly meaningful social gesture in a densely populated city like New York. Inside, fabric is employed as part of an interior screen system that serves both as a spatial divider—separating communal areas of kitchen and laundry facilities from the dwelling units while maintaining visual connection through its transparency—and as a hanging rack for clothes, reinforcing the interplay between function, ritual, and spatial design.

Through the reconfiguration of spatial order, the exposure of fabric, and the revealing of the lifecycle revolved around fabric, as an architectural tectonic gesture in both interior and exterior contexts, this design project repositions the laundromat as a liminal zone where architecture, art, and everyday life converge. It challenges conventional paradigms and contributes to contemporary discourse on participatory design, relational aesthetics, and the democratization of art-making.


Left images: 
(1) Street View along Mott Street.(2) Corner of Mott and Bayard Streets.&#38;nbsp;(3) Laundry-Drying Balcony;&#38;nbsp;(4) Street-Corner Communal Laundromat.(5) Indoor Communal Laundry and Social Room in the Renovated Lee Association Building.(6) Interior View of Bedroom towards the Balcony. 
(7) Axon View of Facade Intervention.
(8) Street Elevation &#38;amp; Section.(9) Lee Association Floor Plans.(10) Ground Floor Programatic Plan.
Below images:
Physical model.

Spring 2025, collab with Stephanie Rosas. 
Instructor: Lyndon Neri.

&#60;img width="3024" height="4032" width_o="3024" height_o="4032" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/238326b753a83d907da506d32186daa120b17413fa1db9324920510b8efa7fd5/model.png" data-mid="249862560" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/238326b753a83d907da506d32186daa120b17413fa1db9324920510b8efa7fd5/model.png" /&#62; 
</description>
		
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	<item>
		<title>Mobile Newsroom</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Mobile-Newsroom</link>

		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:20:42 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Mobile-Newsroom</guid>

		<description>

From the Tent to the Mobile Newsroom: 
Rebuilding Democratic Infrastructure Through Architecture


“What we today call democracy is a form of government where the few rule, at least supposedly, in the interest of the many. This government is democratic in that popular welfare and private happiness are its chief goals; but it can be called oligarchic in the sense that public happiness and public freedom have again become the privilege of the few.” 
—Hannah Arendt, On Revolution

&#60;img width="15428" height="10713" width_o="15428" height_o="10713" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7b92bb1cffee8d0cf0a6a852f9035397e061951d07fdfd31c67f00efa79164af/Elina-Liz-studio.jpg" data-mid="249859848" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7b92bb1cffee8d0cf0a6a852f9035397e061951d07fdfd31c67f00efa79164af/Elina-Liz-studio.jpg" /&#62;


Mobile Newsroom Aggregated Complex.


Architecture in an Age of Democratic Uncertainty
This studio (Fall 2024 at Princeton School of Architecture) emerged during a period of profound political and institutional uncertainty. As democratic systems face increasing polarization, journalism—the institution through which citizens obtain, evaluate, and debate information—has simultaneously entered a state of crisis. The proliferation of misinformation, the decline of professional local reporting, and the erosion of public trust have weakened journalism's traditional commitments to accuracy, independence, impartiality, and accountability. Rather than approaching these problems as purely political or technological, this studio asks what role architecture might play in rebuilding public trust in democratic institutions. Can architecture provide new civic infrastructures that encourage participation, transparency, and collective responsibility?

The three projects developed over the course of the studio investigate this question through the evolving typology of the tent. Historically, tents have represented mobility, temporality, adaptability, and political resistance. Their lightweight construction allows them to appear wherever institutional space is absent, transforming vacant land into places of assembly, protest, and collective action. Resurrection City, erected on the National Mall in 1968 during the Poor People's Campaign, demonstrated how simple timber frames and canvas could become an architectural language of political visibility. At the same time, the experimental proposals of Archigram imagined portable architectures that dissolved the distinction between infrastructure and habitation. David Greene's Cushicle and Suitaloon merged clothing, shelter, and transportation into personal environments, while Peter Cook's Plug-In City envisioned a society built from modular units attached to a larger infrastructural framework. Together, these precedents suggest that mobility is not simply a technical condition but a political one, allowing architecture to reach populations excluded from permanent institutions.

Project 1: Participatory Voting System

The first project reinterprets the tent as a distributed voting infrastructure. Rather than limiting civic participation to election cycles, it proposes a system through which citizens can continuously vote on congressional bills and record personal testimonies throughout the year. In the United States, legislation is introduced daily while elected representatives remain in office for years between elections, creating a disconnect between ongoing public opinion and legislative decision-making. The project addresses this gap through a network of portable voting booths constructed from carbon-fiber shells supported by aluminum frames. Distributed across the country, these booths enable both voting and the recording of local experiences. Digital memory cards transport the collected information to identical structures on the National Mall, where voting results and testimonies are displayed according to congressional districts. Rather than functioning solely as polling stations, the tents become civic monuments that archive public voices and make otherwise invisible political participation visible within the nation's symbolic center.

&#60;img width="7200" height="10800" width_o="7200" height_o="10800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/10d9a7a9cdf31f01a869129c16270bc865f6a4c398577696ae7cc3ac300f1e92/Final-Drawings_Page_10.jpg" data-mid="249859705" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/10d9a7a9cdf31f01a869129c16270bc865f6a4c398577696ae7cc3ac300f1e92/Final-Drawings_Page_10.jpg" /&#62;
A tent prototype for the Participatory Voting System
 

Project 2: the Adaptive Civic TentThe second project expands the architectural capacity of the tent beyond voting itself by transforming it into a flexible civic infrastructure that evolves throughout the election cycle. Constructed as transportable steel A-frame structures clad in fabric, the tents are designed for rapid deployment and multiple configurations. During the months preceding an election, they function as temporary shelters, public markets, and civic gathering spaces. As election season approaches, exhibition spaces documenting the history of American democracy and voting are introduced, while the central gathering space becomes a public debate forum. During early voting, portions of the exhibition transform into polling stations until, on election day, the entire complex operates as a voting center.
Two organizational strategies are explored: a linear configuration that incorporates existing stairs and topography to produce public forums between rows of voting tents, and a circular arrangement that positions debate at the center, surrounded by exhibitions and voting booths. Throughout these transformations, the fabric enclosure creates an intentionally ambiguous boundary between spaces for receiving information and spaces for exchanging ideas, emphasizing that democratic participation emerges through dialogue as much as through the act of voting itself.

&#60;img width="7200" height="10800" width_o="7200" height_o="10800" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/21b441d81c460c02bab949c0a9db6b815977362c7ee36473b96949d13b9cfd21/Final-Drawings_Page_11.jpg" data-mid="249859706" border="0" data-scale="98" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/21b441d81c460c02bab949c0a9db6b815977362c7ee36473b96949d13b9cfd21/Final-Drawings_Page_11.jpg" /&#62;
Adaptive Civic Tents for Election

Project 3: the Mobile Newsroom
While the first two projects examine democratic participation through elections, the third project shifts attention toward journalism, recognizing that democracy depends not only on voting but also on reliable systems for producing and distributing information. Across the United States, local journalism has experienced dramatic decline. Thousands of newspapers have disappeared, television and radio audiences have diminished, and large regions of the country have become "news deserts" with little or no access to trustworthy reporting. At the same time, social media platforms have transformed information into an endless stream of opinion, entertainment, and misinformation, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish verified reporting from speculation. This institutional decline has paralleled growing political polarization and repeated attacks on the legitimacy of professional journalism.
The Mobile Newsroom responds by proposing a distributed network of transportable journalistic workstations that extends beyond a centralized media headquarters. Instead of concentrating journalistic production within an inaccessible institutional building in Washington, D.C., the project disperses reporting infrastructure directly into communities lacking reliable news coverage. Each Mobile Newsroom is housed within a compact twelve-by-thirty-foot pod mounted on a trailer chassis, allowing journalists to travel independently to remote rural communities, disaster sites, political events, or neighborhoods without permanent news organizations. Stainless steel construction provides durability, while electrochromic glazing regulates visibility between public engagement and private work. Adjustable side panels enable multiple units to connect, transforming individual workstations into collaborative newsroom complexes whenever greater production capacity is required.

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 Figures &#38;amp; Maps on News Deserts, Newsroom Distribution, &#38;amp; News Cycles


Internally, the pod alternates between two operational modes. In newsroom mode, it contains broadcast equipment, multimedia editing stations, satellite communication systems, interview spaces, and collaborative work areas that allow journalists to report, edit, and transmit information directly from the field. In residential mode, the same structure becomes a compact living environment equipped with sleeping quarters, a kitchenette, bathroom facilities, and private workspace, enabling journalists to remain embedded within the communities they cover. This dual condition acknowledges that journalism is simultaneously a profession and a lived social practice requiring sustained presence rather than occasional observation.


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&#60;img width="7764" height="10746" width_o="7764" height_o="10746" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/f71c1794d5901cf65d838a9a5d8d832a3f485a7be3d6562cac45a7684e592fd2/Final-Drawings_Page_05.jpg" data-mid="249859841" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/f71c1794d5901cf65d838a9a5d8d832a3f485a7be3d6562cac45a7684e592fd2/Final-Drawings_Page_05.jpg" /&#62;

Mobile Newsroom Prototype in Dual Modes: Newsroom Mode &#38;amp; Journalist Residential Mode

The project imagines three operational scenarios. In remote locations, a single Mobile Newsroom enables journalists to report breaking events with full broadcasting capability while remaining physically present within the communities they document. When multiple units converge, they assemble into a larger newsroom complex that supports collaboration, shared production facilities, and greater public visibility. Finally, individual units may operate as neighborhood media hubs, displaying curated news stories, hosting conversations with residents, and creating spaces where citizens can directly engage with journalists. In each case, the architecture does not merely house journalism; it renders the process of news production visible, accessible, and accountable to the public.
Taken together, these three projects propose an architectural progression from temporary civic assembly to distributed democratic infrastructure. The tent evolves from a symbol of political gathering into an active mechanism for voting, public debate, and ultimately journalistic production. Across each iteration, mobility functions not simply as a logistical strategy but as a means of extending democratic institutions into places where they are absent or inaccessible. Rather than designing static monuments to democracy, the projects imagine adaptable systems that travel, assemble, and respond to changing political conditions. In doing so, they suggest that architecture can contribute to rebuilding public trust not by representing democratic values symbolically, but by creating the physical infrastructures through which participation, transparency, and collective accountability become possible.

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Exhausted Renegade Elephant Found in Woodland, Washington.

&#60;img width="7200" height="7200" width_o="7200" height_o="7200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4c8f91b4162f892869c6b1dd690dd4c2b53f81c2f8da2220470150cf18b87deb/Final-Drawings_Page_08.jpg" data-mid="249859703" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4c8f91b4162f892869c6b1dd690dd4c2b53f81c2f8da2220470150cf18b87deb/Final-Drawings_Page_08.jpg" /&#62;
Touchdowns in the Desert: Football Festival Celebrates Community Spirit in Kayenta, Navajo Nation.

&#60;img width="7200" height="7200" width_o="7200" height_o="7200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/99d1e8f24393bc6212b5cf4cab4cc0d384a30e526c8c689f33055831fdec6a23/Final-Drawings_Page_09.jpg" data-mid="249859704" border="0"  src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/99d1e8f24393bc6212b5cf4cab4cc0d384a30e526c8c689f33055831fdec6a23/Final-Drawings_Page_09.jpg" /&#62;
Press Forward Delivers News to the Heart of Cul-de-sac Communities.
Fall 2024, independent work. Instructor: Liz Diller &#38;amp; Phillip Denny.


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		<title>Poetics of Tectonics</title>
				
		<link>https://elinachenyiying.com/Poetics-of-Tectonics</link>

		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 23:03:11 +0000</pubDate>

		<dc:creator>Elina Chen</dc:creator>

		<guid isPermaLink="true">https://elinachenyiying.com/Poetics-of-Tectonics</guid>

		<description>

Poetics of Tectonics&#38;nbsp;


Pro-seminar for M.Arch II Post-Professional thesis research.“Hegelian determinism is the space of contestation. In the seminar, contested historical events are represented as case studies. Composed primarily of ninetheenth and twentieth century essays, the case studies attempt to reanimate critical debates within aspects of the design disciplines. The sequence of essays reflected an underlying order (conflict) used to set ‘the new’ against ‘the traditional’ demonstrating that the ‘break with tradtion’ is, in fact, systemic. It is a three-step process whereby a tradition is 1) recognized, 2) negated, and 3) replaced.” -- Darell Fields, 2024.


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Poetics of Tectonics argues for the significance of marking the ground and revealing the joint, using Carlo Scarpa, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Kengo Kuma as examples.
	

Special thanks to seminar teacher Darell Fields.
Fall 2024, independent work.Download PDF here.


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