Meet Qizhen Tang

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Qizhen Tang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Qizhen below.

Qizhen, so glad you were able to set aside some time for us today. We’ve always admired not just your journey and success, but also the seemingly high levels of self-discipline that you seem to have mastered and so maybe we can start by chatting about how you developed it or where it comes from?

One might argue that luck plays a role in one’s life and career journey, but I firmly believe that without consistent effort and self-improvement, one may never even encounter luck. While self-discipline is closely tied to a person’s character and personality, I believe there are universal factors that help me maintain it in my daily life.

Having clear, specific goals—both short-term and long-term—has always been a crucial element of my mindset. I typically set goals that are achievable with dedication, time, and effort, and when these goals are accumulated over time, they lead to significant accomplishments.

I also believe that maintaining a stable, regular routine allows my mind to be free for the intensive, creative, and complex work I most enjoy. Self-discipline and a structured daily schedule reinforce one another, and the positive impact they have on my work motivates me to keep them as integral parts of my lifestyle.

Motivation certainly plays a role in my commitment to self-discipline. There are moments when these two concepts are mostly interchangeable in my daily life, helping me transform not only my ambitions but sometimes emotions and feelings into catalysts for self-improvement.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am a professional architect based in Washington D.C., working on both large, complex projects at my firm and engaging in small, enjoyable competitions on my own. While my perspective on the very concept of “architecture” has evolved over the past 12 years of education and practice, my passion for it remains rooted in the belief that architecture is a process of creating tangible, meaningful, and inherently systematic artifacts that have a real impact on our daily lives.

In recent years, my focus and interests have shifted from the complexity of form to the complexity of process in architectural design. It has become increasingly clear to me that the methodologies we employ to create a design may be more critical, compelling and even attractive than the final product itself. Guided by this evolving perspective, I have explored alternative, innovative, and automated workflows in both my professional and personal work, including optimized parametric design processes that bridge between design and engineering, as well as research on evaluation algorithms for the quantitative analysis of space within specific building typologies.

Looking ahead, I’ve set myself a lifelong pursuit, should I continue in this field: to design wisely and build wisely. The process of delivering design matters as much as the work itself. Similarly, how we define the role of an architect in today’s ever-changing world is just as significant as how we defined the concept of “architecture” a century ago.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

As I’m still early in my career as a professional architect, I’m in the process of establishing my own framework of skills and knowledge. If I were to highlight three essential principles for both myself, my peers, and future generations of architects, that would be the following:

• Never stop learning
The “knowledge” of architecture—and design practice in general—is far broader than it is deep. As we gain more experience in design practice, we come to realize that there are rarely “new” solutions, but rather, solutions customized to accommodate specific contexts and scenarios. Building this “dataset” requires constant exposure to different ideas, both within and across disciplines.

• Question existing solutions
The way people design and build has changed little over the centuries. In our daily practice, the way we currently do something does not necessarily mean that it is the way things should be done. Questioning the process, workflows, and methodologies opens the door to more fundamental changes in how we approach design and can lead to significant shifts in our practice and paradigms.

• Develop and maintain a strong work ethic
Being diligent and rigorous in both professional and personal work does not hinder creativity. In fact, the ability to execute ideas in a well-thought-out, organized, and professional manner is one of the most essential qualities an architect should possess.

All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?

Like many young architects early in their careers, I’ve been working to align my professional practice, career goals, and personal aspirations in architectural design. This longstanding challenge has been further complicated by a much broader issue facing our entire industry: the rise of artificial intelligence. How can we understand and leverage AI in our work, which, by nature, remains deeply traditional in its methods of production and delivery? My ultimate hope is that creativity in architecture should not only stem from human experience and inspiration but also from an innovative, systematic process where we, as architects, approach, analyze, and solve problems with the aid of new tools and databases that were previously unavailable. Between today’s reality and this ultimate vision, there are far more challenges—many and mostly undefined—than the general ones already identified.

Given that my interest lies in design processes and the innovation of design delivery methods, I find it challenging to incorporate the latest technological advancements into the traditional yet highly complex and closed system of our project delivery process. In many cases, our daily professional work may not even allow such attempts due to realistic constraints.

As both my own pursuit and part of the industry’s quest, there are a couple of things I’ve been trying as a starting point to address such challenges. Beyond equipping myself with essential skills such as coding and advanced parametric design workflows, I’ve been seeking out small opportunities in both my professional and personal work where ideas and methodologies can be tested at a lower “cost” and risk before being scaled. I’m deeply grateful to my team at Gensler, who continuously encourage me to “carve out” small portions of project work to experiment and explore. Through both successes and failures, I genuinely hope that one day we’ll be able to develop ideas, methodologies, and processes that can be applied and implemented in a larger context, ultimately leading to meaningful changes in the way we work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sites.google.com/view/qizhen-tang/home
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qizhen-tang-aia-51608086

Image Credits

Shuang Chen; Yinzhu Yao; Yue Geng; Haoze Xu; Ruike Liu;