Check Out Zehui Li’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Zehui Li.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
My lifelong romance with art and form was born with studies in Chinese calligraphy, a passion that has extended beyond Xuan paper and into the built environment. As a trained architectural designer and urbanist, my design approach revolves around creating inspiring, sustainable, and highly functional spaces. I completed a Master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon, including coursework on both technology and sustainability. In my career, I explored all phases of the architectural process and how they integrate to achieve great projects. Particularly rewarding for me is Design Development, where a rich dialogue with clients is vital to shaping a design to their vision, a design with which they resonate.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s never been easy and smooth. Keeping a work-life balance and staying organized always takes a quiet effort. In our early careers as young architects, we inevitably learned how to deal with project deadlines while spare time to pass the licensure exams. As a by-product, the pressure and stress are not escaping during such a process. When it comes to architectural practice, compared to academia, intense communication, and collaboration became new lessons to learn and might make us struggle. Unlike in school, where we finish the work alone, as part of the collaboration process in a design firm, we now need to keep track of the team and find our specific roles with delegated tasks. Similarly, as my profession grows, I am also developing communication skills to interchange our design insights with clients’ feedback to ensure the streamline of the overall project.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a trained architect & urbanist with over three and a half years of experience covering a broad spectrum of design groups, from boutique offices to world-chained firms. As a LEED-accredited professional, my design journey accommodates a variety of architectural typologies and commercial projects, including retail interiors, office-residential complexes, tech campuses, and airports. Proudly and consistently, my design principles approach architectural design as an opportunity to create inspiring, highly functional environments that meet or exceed client expectations, enhance their narrative setting, and couple design with technology to produce livable, sustainable, health and wellness-promoting, and elegantly human spaces. Outside of work, I engage in my passion for calligraphy while also enjoying photography, concerts, cycling, and fitness.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://issuu.com/louislee910/docs/2023_for_presentation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zehui-li-6206b0158/