Ruoran (Lerena) Zhao
Ruoran approaches design as a way of thinking — an exploratory process that moves fluidly across disciplines. Her work spans architecture, interiors, products, and furniture, unified by a deep curiosity about how material, scale, form and sensation shape human experience, and how design can help open new ways of seeing, understanding, and relating. She embraces ambiguity and uncertainty as a space for discovery, allowing unanticipated solutions to emerge through research and creative dialogue with the context — an ongoing pursuit to not only respond, but to expand the boundaries of what design can reveal and reshape.
Shuchen Dong
Shuchen's design research is underpinned by a clear methodological framework. Her decade-long dedication to formal analysis allows her to decode the ineffable and invisible design intentions behind canonical works, translating them into profound inspiration for her own practice. She believes that exceptional design lies in the ultimate synthesis of reality and concept, sensibility and rationality, matter and spirit—a profound unity that can only be actualized through a highly sophisticated formal language. Her design philosophy intricately weaves together Plato's Theory of Forms, Kantian epistemology, and Heidegger's existential phenomenology. By deconstructing preconceived symbols and concepts, she seeks to awaken the sensory experience of presence, ultimately pursuing a spiritual expression that transcends physical reality.