I am an architectural designer, researcher, and educator working at the intersection of memory, healing, and justice in the built environment. Through public installations, participatory design, community-led constructions, and interdisciplinary collaborations, I explore how architecture can hold stories, promote justice, and repair fractured landscapes. From refugee-led school in Kenya, to post-conflict memory-making in Bosnia and Rwanda, to community mapping of disability experience in Pennsylvania, my work sees architecture not as a static form but as a relational practice—one that listens, adapts, and affirms the right to belong, remember, and resist.
Christina Chi Zhang
Assistant Professor, Architecture
Education:
MArch, Yale School of Architecture
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Focus Areas
Additional Interests
- Urban Studies
- Social Justice
- Memory-Making
- Storytelling
- Rock Climbing
- Muay Thai Boxing
- Painting
Personal Statement
Biography
Christina Chi Zhang is an architectural designer, educator, and researcher whose work centers memory-making, healing, and justice in the built environment. She engages architecture as a relational practice—one that listens, adapts, and affirms the right to belong, remember, and resist.
Christina specializes in participatory design, public installations, and community-engaged construction. She has co-led the design and construction of a refugee-run school in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya; collaborated with Deaf New Americans in Syracuse on a rammed-earth community kitchen; and led community mapping initiatives with disabled residents in Pennsylvania to understand and reimagine urban life through the lens of disability justice. Her research on post-conflict memory-making spans Bosnia and Rwanda, where she engages architecture as a tool for remembrance and reconstruction.
Her recent exhibitions include Seeds of Liberation (Lehigh University), I found within me an invincible summer (Syracuse University), Thank you for loving me till the end (Yale University), each exploring space as a medium for collective memory, healing, and justice.
Christina has practiced professionally at EFFEKT Arkitekter in Copenhagen, Studio MM Architect in New York City, Turner Brooks Architect in New Haven, and Atelier Deshaus in Shanghai.Before joining Lehigh University as Assistant Professor of Architecture, she has taught at Syracuse University and Yale University. Her work has been recognized by the ACSA Collaborative Practice Award, the AIA Henry Adams Medal, and the Louis Sudler Prize in the Arts. She holds a B.A. and an M.Arch from Yale University.
Research & Creative Work
Installation, “Seeds of Liberation.” Lehigh University Art Galleries, 2025.
Built work, “Soil in Our Hands: Rammed-Earth Community Kitchen for Deaf New Americans,” Kirkville, NY, 2024.
Installation, “I found within me an invincible summer.” Syracuse University Marble Room, 2024.
Exhibition, “Thank you for loving me till the end: Life, Memory and Reconstruction in Post-Atrocity Bosnia and Rwanda.” Yale University North Gallery, 2022.
Installation, “Map of Immensity and Incomprehensibility.” Yale University North Gallery, 2022.
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"Soil in Our Hands: Rammed-Earth Community Kitchen for Deaf New Americans"
Photo of the completed community kitchen, Soil in Our Hands, a faculty-led design-build project celebrating rammed-earth construction with Deaf New Americans.
"Soil in Our Hands: Rammed-Earth Community Kitchen for Deaf New Americans"
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“I found within me an invincible summer”
A Storytelling Installation that uses visual language and spatial tools to create accessible, emotionally resonant environments navigating difficult conversations around conflict, trauma, colonial histories, and memory activism.
“I found within me an invincible summer”
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“Thank you for loving me till the end: Life, Memory and Reconstruction in Post-Atrocity Bosnia and Rwanda"
“Thank you for loving me till the end: life, memory, and reconstruction in post-atrocity Bosnia and Rwanda" is an academic exhibition that examines the violence of architecture alongside its capacity to resist, rebuild, and remember in the post-traumatic landscapes of Bosnia and Rwanda.
“Thank you for loving me till the end: Life, Memory and Reconstruction in Post-Atrocity Bosnia and Rwanda"
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“Seeds of Liberation”
"Seeds of Liberation" is a participatory installation and spatial provocation that critiques carceral architecture while amplifying stories of survival, resistance, and abolitionist imagination. Through layered spatial narratives, the exhibition invites viewers to imagine liberatory futures beyond confinement.
“Seeds of Liberation”
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"Cycles of Slavery and Confinement"
"Cycles of Slavery and Confinement" is a provocative map that unearths the entangled histories of racial violence, displacement, and incarceration surrounding the Manhattan Detention Center.
"Cycles of Slavery and Confinement"
"I Found Within Me an Invincible Summer"
Exhibition Opening and Talk: Harry der Boghosian Fellow 2023-24
September 10, 2024 at Slocum Hall.
Christina Zhang
"I Found Within Me an Invincible Summer"