Join AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee for a conversation with School of Architecture faculty, Poyao Shih, designer, educator, and founder of POSITION Studio, as he reflects on a career moving between the extremes of design scale. From the headquarters of Quarra Stone and Mission Rock Block B at WORKac, where questions of infrastructure and urban systems dominated, to contributions to installations for Höweler + Yoon and Sarah Sze during his time at Quarra, and later collaborations with artists Kate Williams and Hannah Evans through POSITION Studio, alongside the award-winning X-Site Pavilion in Taipei—Poyao’s work demonstrates how design intelligence shifts across vastly different contexts.
Drawing from both professional and academic projects, Poyao explores how lessons learned at one scale can be applied to another—how the thinking behind large-scale frameworks can inform the intimacy of interiors and installations, and how the precision of detail-making can strengthen approaches to urban complexity. This lecture invites reflection on what it means to continually “scale up, scale down,” and to use design as the driving tool across every dimension of practice.
AIANY Emerging New York Architects Committee Meeting (Featuring Poyao Shih)
Speakers: Poyao Shih, founder of POSITION Studio, Visiting Assistant Professor of Pratt School of Architecture
Moderator: Hao-Yeh Lu, Co-Chair of ENYA
Wednesday, October 15, 2025, 6:30–8 PM
RSVP