I believe in architecture as a stage for human life; I believe in architecture as a object to root our fragile corporeal existence in the land of wilderness and nature; I believe in the architecture of memories, where echoes of civilization rebound through its walls through time though place. In its essence I believe in Architecture as a wormhole to transport, transfigure and transform.
I open the door and the creak of floorboards betray my entry. “Ming-Ming?
Why are you up” “I had a nightmare. Giants were chasing after me.” The edge of rafters gleam slightly from light spilling in from windows, there’s a street lamp out, I climb into the double bed beneath the sheets, and the soft scent of wood mixed with my parent’s laundry detergent lulls me back to sleep.
It was a day of rain, heavy rain, I could see the droplets hit the ground and burst into flowers of water. The terrazzo floors were drenched a shade darker than normal. “We should run, right?”
“It’s the only way.” We crash through puddles, our trainers drenched to the sock, rain pells the fabric of our pure white uniform translucent, my feet hit
the paving of the corridor and lose traction, we slip, crashing together into the white paint wall. The wall was so cold, the floors so wet, I laughed but the rain was so loud I could only see the heaving of your chest and that dark half-moon crescent smile. Sometimes I lean against a damp wall in rain and go back to that day. I can’t go back to that place. I can’t. Why? Because I go back and bump into you. Bump into me. Bump into the ghosts of who we once were and the dreams we once dreamed. Isn’t that a good thing? Is it?
and erecting it, and I know that when in a building made with love, one can never — never be alone.
So let time write its name on the wall, and child, take your marker and write it too, and lover, spray paint this house with curse words in your anger. For a building is to be lived in, loved in, lost in.
And when a thousand years later they peel back the paint on the walls, they will find layers,
Sometimes I forget the shape of a room but remember how voices vibrate along its walls. The PVAC, the wiring, the waterproofing materials, soundproofing materials and insulation behind this wall is what makes up for its thickness. I look at the wall and think of all the hands that went into drawing it padding it
layers upon layers of us.
2023–2024
2023
2024–present
2024–present
2025–present
2025–present 2025–present
AWARDS
Head, NCKU ARCH Speech Department
Master of Ceremony, Sustainable Formosa Design Forum
Research Assistant, to Professor Patrick Hwang
Research Assistant, to Chair, NCKU ARCH, Cheng-Luen, Hseuh
Teaching Assistant, Year 1 Design Studio
Teaching Assistant, to Professor David Tseng
Co-Coordinator, NCKU ARCH NEW YORK 2025 Summer School (in collaboration with Pratt CCA)
NCKU ARCH NEW YORK Scholarship, Youngest Recipient
Selected Top Works, Y2 Studio
Best Designer Award, Y2 Studio
Vertical Competition, Honourable Mention
Vertical Competition, Best Construction
Selected Top Works, Y3 Studio
Kaohsiung Competition for New Architects, Newbie Award
ENGLISH (native) CHINESE (native) GERMAN (basic use)
RHINO/REVIT/AUTOCAD
GRASSHOPPER
PHOTOSHOP
ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR
D5
“All the world’s a stage, and all men and women merely players.”
An entrance, an exit.
A room where laughter lingers, a corridor where footsteps fade.
A school—not to learn, but to fall. To fail. To want.
To collide, headfirst, with reality—yet remain sheltered from it.
A threshold, a pressure chamber. Seclusion and exposure, in balance. The last necessary fiction.
Learning as a network, but what holds it together?
A triangle. A contradiction. A rural town wedged between a technology park and an expanding city. AI, online teaching, customised curriclum, what do we learn when all knowledge is at our findertips?
A school redefines itself—not an isolated institution, but a point of convergence, a sanctuary, a node, binding work, life, and education into a new urban ecology of the future generation.
SITE PLAN. the walk to school, by the creek and seasons.
An overlay mapping of surrounding geographical, transportational and figure-ground conditions.
A study in virtural and physical learning environments shows the latter to be a grid, the previous, a web.
At the hinge between past and future, let us rebuild the haven—not as a system, but as a synthesis. We begin, by housing a web in a grid.
classroom as homebase
1-9 Homerooms
A Security
B Dance Studio
C Staff Office
D Counseler
E Sunken Theatre
F Maker Studio
G
Each module customisable. Each class a family. Here is where the journey to learn begins.
Studio Village H Old Tree Plaza
Learning unfolds across steps, screens, and sunlit corners. A room for belonging.
One module, three lenses: access, nature, and home.
Classroom Module
Classroom Interior
a study hub
S ee all, know all. The second floor is a ground for curiosity to foster. 6 years old to 15 years old, a microcosm of the wider world.
a Art Studio
b Ladder Holes
c Social Science Lab
d Bio & Chem Lab
e Physics Lab
f Literature Lab
g Math Lab
h Music Studio
i Culinary Lab
2F PLAN
0 10 20 50 m
View From The Study Hub—where academic laboratories open into an experimental landscape of learning.
playing. exploring. seeing. laughing. learning.
And so they move between levels, experiencing to the fullest. Learning is for a lifetime, let this be the first torrent that grows into a mighty river.
the 1st stage, for the children
for the future, it’s theirs.
the second stage — for the dying
SPACE FOR DEATH
Space for Physician
Assisted Dying
Structure: RC
Materials: Water Washed
Concrete, Stone,
Weathered Steel.
YEAR: 2024
TYPE: Sophmore Studio Design
TEAM: Ming-Ming TAN
They drag us through with pills, wires,
When does this end? When can I go?
This is not life, no longer.
We do not choose our entry. But perhaps, we can choose our exit.
My time has come, to lay with the roots.
when modern technology sustains us, too long, too painful, when should we stop?
Medical intervention prolongs life, but is this what it means to be truly alive? This is what I call a post-modern death, a death of the spirit, stuck in a rotting body, half-dead, half alive. In
TRAJECTORYS OF DYING
the past, death was evident as a cycle of life, in wilting leaves and hunted prey. As death becomes artificially barred, our fear for it grows. Detached, we are terrified of the unknown that awaits.
Pencil study of burial ground— eroded, layered, buried.
Shall we go like the leaves? A decayed leaf hangs in a ray of sun brighter in its fall than any green could be.
The site traverses a city of death—public to private, north to south.
Before form, before ritual, architecture must reckon with the space between life and death
farewell, world.
garden for family
reception hall
meditation chamber
family entrance
garden for public
between leaves and roots
light falls, on the living, on the dying
I descend, back to Mother earth.
through choice, of my own. Walk,
(silence)
“you know how much you mean to me.”
“yes.”
“then...
“...goodbye.”
The 2nd stage: for the dying.
in the end, aren’t we all?
the third stage — for the people
CONNECTIVE TISSUE
Resiliency Strategy for BNY Waterfront
Structure: SS
Materials: Waterproof Steel, Glass
YEAR: 2024
TYPE: Summer Project
TEAM: Ming-Ming TAN
Richard FU
CoCo CHEN
Kai-Chi LIU
Two lines drawn across a city edge.
One cuts into the ground to hold back the water. One hovers above to carry the people.
Not barriers. Not walls. But choreography—between industry, nature, and the public.
A stage for separation, without exclusion.
negotiation, with a line, by a line. (or two).
urban strategy for the brooklyn navy yard
The Brooklyn Navy Yard sits at the intersection of revival and retreat.
It is the site of a city-led push to restore manufacturing—a new economy for New York’s industrial waterfront.But it is also a site of tension: rising sea levels threaten its edges, while public desire for access challenges its operational boundaries.The yard is active, but isolated.A ferry stop delivers visitors into
a space they cannot fully enter. Trucks move beside waterfronts nobody can reach.
This project gives its proposal: a strategy made out of two lines.
A trench is cut into the landscape—designed to hold rising water, but shaped to allow play, pause, and gathering when dry. Its slope becomes a soft barrier: separating without
denying. Above it, a skywalk spans the yard. It connects public transportation nodes to the waterfront, archs over private ground, and provides new access without interference. Together, these two lines mediate the overlapping demands of water, industry, and public life.Not by separation, but by choreography.
An overlay of flood maps and demographic data reveals a stark truth: low-income communities at the perimeter face the highest risk from rising waters. This design becomes both refuge and resource—a public playground in dry seasons, and a hydrological shield in times of flood. Below ground, a network of filters, tanks, and conduits stores and redistributes stormwater. The flood, once a threat, is refigured as a gift—absorbed, redirected, and returned.
dry haven.
The trench as threshold: infrastructure in repose. floodable protected waterline
At full capacity, the trench intercepts and redirects overflow.
Its curvature and depth are
designed to retain volume without breach. Overflow enters a sub-surface system of tanks and conduits. The architecture
shifts into infrastructural mode—passive becomes active.
industry, moves, uninterrupted.
Dual systems ensure uninterrupted industrial logistics.
The skywalk connects public transport to the waterfront without intersecting operational zones. Truck routes, loading bays, and industrial access remain isolated, dry, functional. The flood infrastructure absorbs, the circulation network bypasses.
Two systems, distinct in logic, operate in tandem, without friction.
unloading area testinggrounds
factory/warehouse skywalk
The 3rd stage, for the people.
When the city breathes, so do we.
the fourth stage — for our species
YEAR: 2024
TYPE: Competition
STSP National Education Centre
Structure: SS
Materials: Steel, Reinforced Glass, Wire Mesh
TEAM: Ming-Ming TAN
Shih-An LEE
Pei-Yi WEI
Yu-Xiang HUANG
Yan-Tong CHEN
Ting-Shu CHOU HATCHER...
Xiang-Chi TSENG
The new national educational core in the Southern Taiwan Science Park, where TSMC holds bay. HATCHER is not a single project. It is a prototype. A possibility. A pulse.
Here, architecture is not a container. It is an interface. A place that listens before it speaks.
If the stage is set—this is where the script begins to unravel.
A prototype for what cannot be predicted, only prepared..
No more containment. No more stillness.
We reject the building as a sealed ob- ject.
We reject programs frozen in time. We propose a system that listens. That transforms. That learns. Architecture is not the end product. It is the beginning of process. HATCHER is a site for collision— of disciplines, bodies, data, and futures. It does not predict. It prepares. It does not dictate. It
Thisadapts. is not architecture for stability,
Every interaction triggers data. Public and researcher responses are processed.Results are not archived—they are built.
This is architecture for change.
i see u, and u see me, and who is to say which of us is right? the future is a collective hallucination.
material tower
Waste, feedback, and matter are reprocessed.AI interprets patterns. The tower outputs material, robotic arms build. An AIOT.
Architecture—now temporary, iterative, testable. Printed, tested, replaced. Form is temporary. Intelligence is cumulative.
A red loop takes the public through the machine: politicians, scientists, strangers— watching each other think. Ideas recorded.
Impressions archived. At vision stations, futures are spoken, drawn, imagined. The AI listens. From these fragments, spawnings emerge.
Printed. Manifested. Docked onto the loop. They are entered, touched, judged. Some fail. Some evolve.
And the cycle continues: Architecture, as the afterlife of collective thought.
spawnings a: a world of virtual entertainment
spawnings b: co-living in a pandemic infested world
spawnings c: a world of overgrown insects.
The 4th stage, for our species.
In this time of globlisation, climate change, and viruses -Your future, it’s mine as well.
