Evan Shieh of New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Design On Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career As An Architect
An Interview With Dina Aletras
Having Empathy and Situational Awareness. Empathy ultimately makes you a better and more well-rounded designer, it allows you to absorb new knowledge more readily and holistically, it makes you a better communicator and narrator to pitch your ideas to an audience, and it makes it easier to push a difficult project across the finish line with consensus. Being empathetic is an increasingly important skill for the designer particularly in this day and age. Designers must be empathetic towards the environment and its ecologies (human and non-human alike); to the potential users of a design project, the stakeholders, communities, and individuals affected; and to people, the colleagues you work with, the people you work for, and those that work for you.
As a part of my series about the ‘Five Things You Need To Know To Create A Highly Successful Career As An Architect,’ I had the pleasure of interviewing Evan Shieh, M.AUD., AIA, Teaching Assistant Professor at New York Institute of Technology’s School of Architecture and Design.
Evan Shieh is an architect, urbanist, researcher, and educator. In addition to serving as a Teaching Assistant Professor of Architecture at New York Institute of Technology, he is the Director of Emergent Studio, a design and research office operating at architecture’s intersection of urbanism, landscape, and infrastructure. He has practiced architecture and urban design professionally for over a decade in both the private and public sectors and previously taught at a variety of other academic institutions, including the Parsons School of Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
Thank you for joining us today! Can you share the story of what led you to pursue a career in architecture?
The cliché story of being a child who loved building things, playing with Legos, and drawing, definitely applied to me as a kid. Growing up, these creative tendencies manifested themselves in music, where I became very involved in violin performance, chamber ensembles, orchestra, and even conducting during my middle and high school years. But knowing the difficulties of pursuing a career in classical music, I decided to instead pursue architecture after taking a computer-aided design (CAD) drafting class in high school. I didn’t know much about the field at the time but ended up loving design, building models, and thinking spatially. The creative and disciplinary skills I developed playing music also translated well into my new passion. I haven’t looked back since, going deeper into the field by pursuing a specialty in urban design for my master’s degree, opening my own design studio after a decade of working in the field, and re-entering academia full-time as a faculty member at New York Institute of Technology’s (New York Tech) School of Architecture and Design.
Can you describe a recent project you completed and what your specific contributions were?
This past spring, my firm (Emergent Studio) entered a competition for the design and construction of the “Banpo-Hangang River Connection Park and Cultural Facilities” — a major public works and infrastructural project decking over a highway in Seoul, South Korea — with a new park, redefining the city’s relationship to the Han River through a public landscape.
Out of more than 80 submissions, we were chosen as one of six finalists to advance to phase two. The project was a collaborative effort between the local Seoul-based firm MMK+, U.S.-based Strange Works Studio, landscape architecture offices Terrain Work and CA Design, and a variety of structural, civil, sustainability, cost-estimate, and other consultants required to present a comprehensive proposal for the site. My office also hired several of my New York Tech students as interns, who contributed to the project in its design and production phase.
While we ultimately did not win (placing third), it was a rare and great opportunity to work on an ambitious project at a scale and site typically unheard of — the type of project I love working on! In addition, traveling to Seoul to present our project to the jury panel, the public, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government was such a valuable learning experience.
How do you approach balancing aesthetics and functionality in your designs?
This balance is precisely the role of the designer — a project can (and should) be both beautifully designed and functional in use. Instead of thinking of aesthetics and functionality as opposites, we should think about how they must work together to condition the built environments that surround us, the spatial relationships they produce, and the impacts they have on the larger systems of the city — socially, behaviorally, and ecologically. Aesthetics and function in synergy have a critical role to play in influencing these relationships, but only if the designer is elevating them on the track towards these larger goals and principles.
No one achieves success alone. Is there someone who has been particularly instrumental in your career? Can you share a story about their impact on your journey?
In some ways, I have had to chart this career path alone. I come from a family of medical practitioners and was the first of my generation to break away and pursue design and architecture. In many ways, I could only have achieved my accomplishments in architecture through the paths carved and doors opened by key mentors and professors who have shaped my philosophies and approach to design.
But if I had to name individuals who have had the deepest impact on my success, and at the risk of sounding cliché, I would have to say my mother and father.
My father, a general surgeon, taught me discipline — that hard work cannot be replaced by talent, to stick to something, persevere, and chip away at it even if sacrifices must be made. My mother, a pharmacist, taught me the importance of pursuing a vision with an uncompromised passion. As first-generation immigrants from Taiwan to the U.S., their sacrifices have enabled my path and I am truly a result of both of their world views.
As an architect and educator, which three character traits have been most crucial to your success? Can you share a story or example for each?
Having Empathy and Situational Awareness. Empathy ultimately makes you a better and more well-rounded designer, it allows you to absorb new knowledge more readily and holistically, it makes you a better communicator and narrator to pitch your ideas to an audience, and it makes it easier to push a difficult project across the finish line with consensus. Being empathetic is an increasingly important skill for the designer particularly in this day and age. Designers must be empathetic towards the environment and its ecologies (human and non-human alike); to the potential users of a design project, the stakeholders, communities, and individuals affected; and to people, the colleagues you work with, the people you work for, and those that work for you.
Applying Discipline and Critical Thinking. Talented people are abundant in the design field. Once you reach a certain level, everyone is talented around you, but talent will only take you so far. To me, my achievements have come through sustained discipline, continual hard work, and the value of critical thinking. Discipline to stick to the vision of a project despite its inevitable compromises; discipline to choose to work on a long-term goal even if those short-term payoffs are not visible; discipline to utilize one’s time (everyone has the same 24 hours in a day) to work both hard and smart; and discipline to always think critically about new information you come across. In a day and age in which many people expect things to be handed to them, there is no replacement for self-discipline. And, in a day and age in which new information is reduced to tag lines and sound bites, there is no replacement for thinking critically about the complex nuances and layers of the environments around us.
Forming a Vision. Approach design (and life) with a big-picture vision — an ability to plan for a potential future with imagination and wisdom. Particularly in the design fields, especially in professional practice, it is very easy to get lost in the details of a project, the compromises that erode a vision, and the everyday realities of execution. But what separates the designers and projects that I admire most and have achieved field-wide acclamation, are those whose larger vision and ambition for a project has survived the economic, fiscal, and regulatory compromises required to execute and implement them. Vision, to me, is about pairing both ambitious imagination with the wisdom to know when to compromise, when to not, and when to take calculated risks. It is one of the most important things I would like to impart to my students as an educator.
Thank you for sharing all that. Now, let’s delve into the core of our interview. What are some things that excite you most about architecture? Can you share a story or example for each?
Architecture’s expansion into interdisciplinary fields. Contemporary architects are being called more and more now to become a jack of all trades, to engage with conversations outside of their core expertise, and systems outside of the traditional definition of the field historically formed as a “trade.” Today, designers are being pushed to become citizen activists, to consider their role in environmental and ecological stewardship, and to expand their sphere of influence in design-adjacent fields. The designer who embraces their role as a citizen of the city and its landscapes, and engages with the complex nuances, contexts, and issues those challenges present, will be well-equipped to tackle the future challenges of the field.
Another exciting part of the field is the speed with which new technologies are impacting the tools designers have at their disposal. Artificial intelligence is just the latest trend in the recent history of technological tools like CAD, geographic information systems (GIS), autonomous (self-driving) vehicles, robotics, and other simulation tools that equip architects and designers to better understand the environment around us in more nuance, to push their ambitions to greater heights, and to then project and design spatial futures for it forward. Technologies that we take for granted today — elevators, automobiles, glass, and steel — have transformed what we have been able to imagine in our built environments. And, of course, there will be future technologies that we could never dream of today but will impact the designers of tomorrow.
What are things that concern you about the industry? If you could implement three changes to improve it, what would they be? Please share any relevant stories or examples.
The things that excite me about the discipline also come with qualifiers that are cause for concern. The first is when architects and designers neglect to understand the complicit role they play in contributing to the environmental (climate), urban (affordable housing), and social (spatial inequity) crises our cities and societies face today. This happens when architects and designers fail to engage with multiple disciplines, relinquish their role in engaging with the urban and ecological systems of a city, and acquiesce to the economic drivers and economies of scale that co-produce these issues at large. The architecture discipline can no longer neglect this complicity, and it is up to designers and design education to challenge the status quo by using the tool of design to do so when possible and when applicable. A designer who limits themselves to think of their responsibility as designing only a singular building is handicapping themselves and their own agency in the world.
Secondly, it concerns me when the field embraces new technologies without being critical of their impact on the built environment. Architects and designers are too quick to proclaim that whatever technology is in vogue now is “the answer” to whatever problem they are trying to solve. Technology should not be viewed as a panacea or “fix-all,” but as a tool that can only assist us in solving our problems ourselves. Misrepresenting tools as solutions is dangerous because any technology — including AI — is only as “smart” as the humans who designed it, equally subject to human flaws, decisions, biases, preferences, and inputs. Technology should certainly be welcomed as a useful tool in helping us define what we value in our built environments and assisting in the efforts to achieve those goals. However, prioritizing technological efficiency above all else, without understanding the nuances of its trickle-down effects and impacts, is something we must constantly be vigilant about.
We must also be very attuned to how the technology we benefit from today will impact our cities and communities in the future. In history, automobiles were a prime example of this, unlocking drastically new forms of urbanization, built environments, and infrastructures, but also bringing with them major cultural, social, and environmental externalities often to deleterious ends. Today, the proliferation of electric vehicles (EVs) is being championed, rightly so, as more sustainable alternatives to fossil-fuel-based mobility. However, the economies of scale required to produce their batteries have already begun to cause negative environmental impacts elsewhere. These include damaging land-water pollution and labor exploitation involved in the large-scale extraction and mining of cobalt and lithium for global production. Instead of just reducing our mobility choices to individual, private, electric vs. non-electric owned vehicles, we should be thinking about the bigger picture and arguing for alternative modes of shared transportation and service models that change the relationship between our mobility and our built environments in more sustainable ways.
What are the five things you believe are essential for creating a highly successful career as an architect? Can you share a story or example for each?
- As I always try to teach my New York Tech architecture students, remember to think big picture — the WHY. Architecture and design should be in service of a larger vision and goal, embedded with values and principles that constitute that goal. Define that vision, and don’t lose the ‘WHY’ of a project through the compromises that will be made along the way.
- But also pay attention to the details — the WHAT and the HOW. Having a vision for a project is one thing, but being able to execute that vision by bringing together the many stakeholders that are needed to achieve a project is another. The on-the-ground details of a project matter immensely to executing a vision, and you cannot have one without the other.
- Think empathetically about the world, the environment, and design — the multiple WHOs. Architecture can no longer afford to turn its back on the environmental and social systems of its context, the city, and its citizens. It demands designers understand how their choices will impact these systems in ways that make our built environments more sustainable, collective, and aesthetically vibrant places to reside.
- Think critically about the built environment, and interrogate any new information or knowledge that you come across! Always be seeking to learn more. Architecture, design, and the global issues they are implicated in are highly nuanced and must be critically dissected to inform any design action.
- Don’t be limited by the disciplinary shackles that the profession or professionals may try to place on you. The role of the architect-designer is evolving, and that is an exciting opportunity to seize on interdisciplinarity to define and make an impact on the spatial environments around us.
These are beliefs that mirror what I try to teach to my students, weaving these lessons in with the foundational and technical skills that are also crucial to an architectural education.
Given your influence, if you could inspire a movement to bring the best results and solutions to the greatest number of people, what would it be? You never know what impact your idea might have!
On the note of emergent technologies, in the past few years, I’ve been researching the impact that autonomous vehicles will have on cities and our collective urban futures. This research will be published as a two-volume book monograph titled Autonomous Urbanism: Towards a New Transitopia (AR+D), available on shelves this fall. The book asks cities and citizens to reconsider the relationship we have with our mobility choices and the spatial opportunities that new mobility technologies will have on the design and evolution of our cities’ built environments.
Rather than embracing this technology blindly, however, we should think of driverless vehicles not as a “solution” to our urban mobility woes, but rather as an important tool that can help cities transition from dependency on the motorized, private vehicles of today to cities designed for shared, multi-modal, and automated vehicles of tomorrow.
With this book, I hope to shift the contemporary conversation towards one in which technological advances are forefronted by the public good — calling on society to re-examine the interdependent relationship between our mobility and urban form, our mobility and infrastructure, our mobility and urbanization, and most importantly, our mobility and our societal ambitions. Lastly, the book offers an alternative and unique form of visual communication to help us envision that future, an architectural graphic novel that challenges the reader to consider how their own mobility choices and behaviors shape urban space and the experiences they engender.
How can our readers follow your work online?
The work I do with my students also appears on New York Tech School of Architecture & Design’s Instagram (@nyitarch) and Facebook. I encourage any aspiring architect to follow these social media accounts to see the great opportunities an architectural education can expose you to!
My work is also posted regularly on my own social media accounts Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, as well as on my studio’s website: https://www.emergent-studio.com/.
Thank you for your time and excellent insights! We wish you continued success.
