TIFFANY XU

Rice University, M.Arch, '20 | David Jaehning Architect, Designer - Portrait courtesy of Tiffany Xu

Tiffany Xu is a designer at David Jaehning Architect in San Francisco. She is a graduate from UC Berkeley and Rice Architecture, where she was co-editor of PLAT Journal and received the William D. Darden Thesis Award. Her research interests focus on modernity  and housing. Her recent work explores modes of depiction in film and architecture.

Space for Inquiry

What inspired you to pursue architecture?

My path to architecture was a bit circuitous and unexpected. I had always loved drawing and geometry when I was young but in my undergraduate studies I took a liberal arts interdisciplinary approach. After completing an internship at the Hirshhorn Museum I ended up focusing on Art and Architecture History. I took a couple studio art classes but I think it was through text, that I found the most pleasure and provocation. Reading Edward Said, or learning about the evolution of photography as a science and then art, for example, completely captivated me and the knowledge instilled a sense of agency.

After graduating I worked for a San Francisco crypto-currency company. I felt very out of place but learned a lot about value and regulations around its exchange. My parents who are very pragmatic were extremely relieved that I had found stable work after studying the humanities. However after two years I decided to pursue my initial interest in art and history. Having to give up parental approval—which I cannot overstate if you are a child of immigrants who relocated for upward mobility— and the work I had put into learning jargon and specific industry knowledge about financial regulation made it a difficult decision.

I received some very career-changing advice from a professor and Dean, at Rice University who had themselves studied history and theory. They encouraged me to study architecture as a means to engage with the questions I was interested in, which meant an M.Arch, not a History of Art program. When I started my M.Arch at Rice my intent was to focus on architecture. I committed myself to ascending a very very steep learning curve. I remember really struggling to draw anything at the beginning. Eventually, I began finding delight in making things and architecture’s ability to render concepts concrete, to inquire, to critique, to conjure beauty, to be foreboding or mundane. Maybe someday I’ll return to text and history but right now I’m on the professional side of the field.

Suture and Estrangement, view: elevation - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

Suture and Estrangement, view: sectional interior - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

What is the most important thing that you learned in the past year?

Obviously this past year has been extremely eventful. I think it has resulted in collective introspection about how we live and participate in the world, and has made clearer what privilege is and who has it most. For me I was really happy to see architecture schools trying to confront the fact that the discipline has deeply internalized biases when it comes to aesthetic values and professional access. I was surprised to see Rice devote their lecture series to social justice, bring in more BIPOC speakers, and create scholarships and support systems for people who may not be encouraged to study architecture. I think somewhere in the back of our minds we know that pedagogy and institutions are malleable, but it is another thing to actually witness a shift or expansion in what educators think constitutes valuable subjects of study. The feeling of being seen and having one’s efforts validated is so important, and the changes that the administration made highlights just how precarious and conditional our priorities can be. I learned we have to remind ourselves of this. It is easy to get used to things or learn to deal.

This year has also been eventful in that it is marked with personal milestones and transitions. I finished my thesis, applied for jobs, graduated, and moved from Texas to California. Like many in my graduating class, the spring was a difficult time of trying to figure out how to find work in a contracted job market. I landed a job in June and feel very lucky to have found something in this uncertain setting. I’m facing another steep learning curve, where I’ve had a lot of first experiences like working with contractors, meeting with tradespeople, and learning about the administrative process for building both a single family house and affordable multifamily housing. Here and there I’ll have moments of wonder at how I am able to apply the analytical and design thinking skills I learned in school. More frequently I’m astounded at the lack of overlap.

Suture and Estrangement, lightbox - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

Suture and Estrangement, view: exterior - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

What are some architectural organizations (or specific person/role model) that helped you learn to overcome an obstacle? How did they?

There are a few individuals who played key roles in supporting my pursuit of architecture at a moment when I was really uncertain about my interests, skills, and competence. I reached out to Fabiola Lopez-Duran and Sarah Whiting by email for advice while deciding on schools and they responded with welcome and helpful resources, which impressed upon me the potentials of reaching out and the importance of sharing knowledge and experiences. Other figures who really supported me along the way were Reto Geiser, for whom I worked and was a teaching assistant, and Brittany Utting, my thesis advisor. Younger fellows were frequently willing to share their experiences and offer encouragement. That I found mentors who were able to understand my work, give me encouragement, and point me in a direction for a course of study, went a long way both logistically and in terms of self-confidence.

It is always difficult to be in a space where you do not see people who look like you or who share your concerns, whether that means being in a coordination meeting with tradespeople as the only woman or person of color, or being in a class where a Europe-centric curriculum is presented as a universally shared history. One of the professors at Rice was really generous and agreed to guide my independent study on Modernity in Japan to try to rectify this gap. It ended up being a really meaningful experience for me. Platforms like Madame Architect that support women by sharing other women’s career paths and experiences are also really powerful.

The three-and-a-half-year M.Arch is a huge investment. When I was deliberating it, no one said much about the chance of finding work after that would be both well-paying and gratifying to help pay off loans. I was lucky that Rice granted me a scholarship which took a lot of pressure off. To be relieved of that stress pressure from the beginning was immensely helpful. Among my graduate school peers I think finances were one of the largest impediments to well-being. It is tangible that financial means affects the demographic of people who are able to entertain the idea of choosing this profession.

Microhouse, elevation - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

Microhouse, model. Materials: foam core, wood, matte board - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

If you were given the opportunity to repeat the year, what is one thing you’d do differently?

Wow 2020 is a year that I would really like to not repeat for the world’s sake. I think right now I would try to be kind to everyone including myself and say that we don’t need to add the stress of regret. I had a period of unemployment between graduating and finding work, during which I read one book on American history and wrote a little, but I definitely was taking my lack of employment hard and struggled with motivation. I could say that in hindsight, there were a few projects that I’d like to have completed or that I could have gotten started on my Architecture Registration Exams. On the other hand I could say the opposite, that in hindsight I wish I could have learned how to take a break, and practiced taking pauses from compulsive activity.

If I could expand the scope of the question to include the past few years, there is advice that I wish I could have heard and implemented earlier in my architectural education. It would have helped me a lot to pay a bit more attention to fabrication, tectonics, and construction from the start. I was often preoccupied with analyzing the political meanings in standardization, industrial production, etc., and I spent a lot of time trying to create ideal forms, which are very important to study and interrogate but it can also be a bit debilitating and insular. This isn’t to say that I wish I had memorized details of framing systems and beam profiles. However there is a lot about material, tectonic systems, and building culture that would have been nice to learn slowly and experiment with outside of the billed work setting.

Microhouse, model, interior view - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

Suture and Estrangement, excerpts - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

As you reflect on the past year, what did you discover as your biggest strengths?

My thesis, which I submitted this past spring, was probably one of the most intense periods of output and work that I have ever taken on. I was surprised at how absorbed I became, and how much I enjoyed the cycles of research, experimentation, and then synthesis for reviews. There were definitely walls and hard moments of not knowing how to go forward. However my questions were rooted in themes of reconciliation, acceptance, and work, which are inexhaustible and matter to me personally. I am fairly good at, and thankfully enjoy, distilling a specific concept and endlessly analyzing its possibilities and boundaries.

This interest in exploring limits transfers well to writing. Writing has always served to help me articulate an argument, but in recent years I have leaned on writing more for helping me sort, meditate upon, learn, and give visibility to what I am uncertain about. While working on Rice’s student-run journal, PLAT, I experienced what it felt like being in the editor’s seat. We solicited proposals, completed routine rounds of editing and looked out for tone, clarity, and ideas. There were a lot of exciting pieces and very prominent people that we spoke with and whose work we featured. However from the editor’s position, the power of a platform and its relationship to a discipline and audience became a lot more apparent. We all see things that other people may not. With my enthusiasm for writing I can make space for inquiry and expression that push the discipline to be more welcoming for bodies that may not have historically occupied it.

PLAT 8.0, Simplicity, cover by Takudzwa Tapfuma - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu

PLAT 8.0, Simplicity, interior view by Takudzwa Tapfuma - Photo courtesy of Tiffany Xu