Emily Xintong Yan Emily Xintong Yan is an architecturak designer, researcher and filmmaker passionate about space, design and their fables. She is currently pursuing a Master of Design Studies in the Narratives domain at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 

Emily’s projects are driven by an intuitive desire to investigate and storytell. Her paper architecture explores the fictive potential of tectonic forms and embeds philosophies of dwelling inspired by film, literature and dreams. Her complex research projects are genre-bending pursuits, intriggued by the capacity of humanism and sociological space. Her narrative style emulsifies fiction and nonfiction, poeticism and facts, creative writing and reportage. She is dedicated to a multi-disciplinary practice where architecture, arts, and letters reaffirm our human presence in the world.

She was born in Singapore, raised in China, grew up in the UK and educated in the US. 




TypeProjectYear
Research, ExhibitionNuclear AlphabetOngoing
Research, DocumentaryIn Praise of Waiting RoomsOngoing
Set designStudio Wenjüe Lu x telos.haus2025
Architectural design
Residence for a jeweler family2025

Concept
Light-Haus2024

Arcihtectural design
Residence for two musicians 2024

Arcihtectural designStephen Friedman Gallery 2023
Concept, DesignIn Search of Settlement
2022

EditorialPostmarked
2022

Concept, Design
House for the Blind
2021

Concept, Design
Archiving the Archives
2021

Photography
Stones Feel, Trees Fly 2020

Photography
Space/Place
Ongoing

Concept, Design Archiving the Archives
2021


This project proposes an adaptive reuse of the demolished Georgia Archives Building. Once sited between the Georgia State Capitol building and important interstate highways, the building was remarked for its preservation of history of Georgia and as a neo-classical modernist landmark. However, the building was also an embodiment of injustices serving antiquated ethics shown through extremely low ceilings in worker-occupied spaces, racially segregated bathrooms, a windowless concrete facade. 
The adaptive reuse strategy focuses on breaking apart the original parking spaces below ground and implanting new typologies of archival and exhibition spaces. In doing so, the original building above is rendered as a memorial monument for its glory and infamy.


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