Urban Drifters




People as Infrastructure, Infrastructure as People. Speculative housing on the Huangpu River for the migrant workers.

Transportation infrastructure and urban migrant workers are both deeply connected and disconnected to the functioning of cities, particularly in Asia. Migrant workers most often perform the on-demand delivery jobs of the growing delivery service industry, overloading and alienating transit spaces. The future of urbanism must embrace these rapid changes by expanding decentralized transit hubs and designing better living conditions for the people who have become our infrastructure; The transportation system can nurture a more efficient, enjoyable, and experiential urban environment.

This project was completed in collaboration with Fred Horton, Wenbo Zhang, and Yixiao Wang. 




These are studies of the Jiashan market in Shanghai’s Xuhui district. Locals sell produce and household goods in this alley. The formal resemblance between the alley and river lead us imagining the Huangpu river as an urban alley, where people “trade” programs and spawn new public activitives. The residential follies are the “stalls” that gather people and action.