Zhaoyang Luo

Luo Zhaoyang is the recipient of an SOM foundation 2017 China Prize for Travel/Research.

Born and raised in Xaoyang, Hubei Province, a city in central China with a long and famous history, Zhaoyang received his Bachelor of Architecture Degree in June 2015 from Guizhou University in Guiyang, Guizhou Province...

Since September 2015, Zhaoyang has been studying for a Master of Architecture degree at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, where his tutor is Professor Sun Cheng, a well-known Chinese regional architect in Northwestern China. Concurrent with his studies at Harbin, Zhaoyang also served an Internship at MAD Architects in Beijing, a global architecture firm committed to developing futuristic, organic, technologically advanced designs that embody a contemporary interpretation of the Eastern affinity for nature.

In his study about the architecture of other countries, Zhaoyang found in the innovative contemporary residential architecture of The Netherlands an abstract interpretation of the relationship of daily llfe and space in which he finds a similarity to the complex geometries of the space and structure found in the architecture of the “settlements” of southwest China, and was particularly interested to learn how the local architects in Netherlands deal with the surroundings with innovative methods, wishing to find a new approach to the settlements in the Southwest of China.  As a 2017 China Prize Winner, Zhaoyang carried out his Travel/Research topic, “A Comparative Study of the Regional Architecture of Southwest China and the Innovative Architecture of The Netherlands”, travelling extensively in the Netherlands from July 1 through August 10, 2017 to observe and map the characteristics of the architecture for comparison with the “regional” architecture found in rural southwest China.

Following receipt of his Master of Architecture degree in January 2018, from HIT, Zhaoyang plans to continue his studies at HIT for the next four years to earn his PhD, undertaking in-depth research about regional architecture design in China.