ESKYIU Ltd Information

ESKYIU is a multi-disciplinary architecture studio that explores how Architecture intersects with transformative cultural landscapes, media, products, print, experimental fabrication systems, educational tools and social sustainability. Founded in New York by Eric Schuldenfrei and Marisa Yiu in 2005, they established the Hong Kong studio-office in 2007. Their architectural practice operates in an open and collaborative environment, at various scales (product-objects to urban scale projects) working closely with various disciplines in a rigorous and sensitive manner. ESKYIU seeks to design a possible future that responds to everyday needs while also referencing the past by creating a design and research practice actively integrating culture, art, community and technology. Their interest lies in examining the ways in which the built environment and constructs of labor shape social relationships by forming connections between civic engagement, social values and sustainable design. In utilizing modest approaches they seek methods that use architecture, animation, art, and technology as a means to engage the larger public. Their tools examine, propose and advocate for change in how resources are used, managed and deployed. Challenging and rethinking how architecture plays a role in the city and global networks specific to the two sites they work and research in. Their projects range from filmic research of unique architectural spaces, media narratives, interactive public installations, manufacturing models to curatorial projects that deal with cultural education, social sustainability and community participation. Such projects involve collaborative operational techniques that bring different disciplines together to experiment in creating new possibilities. Media and changing social structures are research generators for the projects because they force one to question the role of the architect as a citizen, as a social connector, and a spatial designer that forms an active dialogue with the larger public. By exploring media that is capable of constant change such as interactive environments, real-time software, and responsive materials, their work responds to the local community by treating the neighborhood as a laboratory to examine the dynamic functions of both renewal and preservation. Researching the space of a mainland Chinese manufacturing complex provides inspiration which propels further investigation into innovation and sustainable manufacturing techniques to explore new forms of social capital and community based structures. Applying knowledge of China and relating it back to New York's Chinatown reveals the reality of policy, historical legacy, and design aesthetics integrated into the complex network of the two dense global regions ESKYIU operates within. They were awarded the prestigious 'Architectural League Prize', Architectural Record's Design Vanguard, Design for Asia Award, Perspective's '40 under 40'; curated the 2009 HK & SZ Bi-City Biennale; exhibited widely such as the Venice Biennale; lectured internationally such as the Harvard's AsiaGSD conference, TEDx, V&A museum, the Asia Society to Universities world wide from Nanjing, Finland to Cambridge. Recently they published INSTANT CULTURE: Architecture and Urbanism as a Collective Process, designboom reviews the book as "a provocative deliberation that question regional values, cultural consumption, architecture, environment and global pressures faced by Hong Kong, but which apply to many urban centers ".