About

I’m Jack Li — an architectural designer in New York working on spaces and objects that carry what people can’t say out loud.

My thesis asked how a building could hold a scream. That question never left, and I have come to understand where it comes from. Growing up Chinese American means inheriting a set of ideals you did not choose and a habit of carrying things quietly — you swallow it, you keep the day moving, and showing that you needed help is the part that feels unacceptable. That is not only my story. It is a very common one, and almost nothing in the built environment is designed for it.

So the work is narrow and physical: measure something people cannot describe, let the measurement generate the geometry, and build the thing. A scream traced as vectors and printed as a chamber. A web spun inside a rotating box. A screen that filters air, made of CNC, 3D printing, and sewn pods. More on that in research.

I trained as an architect (B.Arch, City College of New York, Summa Cum Laude). I spent my early career on a $1B+ residential development at Kohn Pedersen Fox, then ran global retail design programs at Ralph Lauren across APAC and EMEA, prototyping façade mock-ups and fixtures and bringing AI tools into the design team. I’m currently a VDC Assistant Engineer at Turner Construction, printing scale site models and working across BIM coordination and logistics planning.