Emily Xintong YanEmily Xintong Yan is
an inter-disciplinary designer and researcher based in Cambridge, Massachusetts passionate about spatial design and place narratives. Trained as an architect and multi-displinary artist, she is currently pursuing a history- and theory- focused degree (MDes, Narratives) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Committed to an interdisciplinary practice, she splits her time between multi-disciplinary research, filmmaking, as well as architectural and literary theory. Marked by her deep love for people and humanism, her work strives to hold meaning and create empathetic understanding for the lived experience.
She was born in Singapore, raised in China, grew up in the UK and educated in the US.
Architectural design
Residence for two musicians 2024 A residence for two musicians, this six-storey townhouse integrates living and work under one roof. With the upper levels being a private Victorian-style apartment and the lower three levels embodying music and stylistic experimentation, the building itself symolizes the duality inherited and lived by the musician couple. The design strategy focused on restoring and reinterpreting the existing brownstone’s architectural character and creating two additional levels below the basement to expand on the spatial, functional, visual capacity. Referencing Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, the sub-basement levels are conceived as immersive cinematic spaces for music and video production. An exercise in total design, the project created an opportunity to design and fabricate everything large and small in the house and created a collaborative alliance between the client and designer.