Provoking the Imagination: Studio Becker Xu's Sharon Xu on Answering Big Questions Through Projects of All Sizes
By Julia Gamolina
Sharon Xu is a licensed architect and the co-founder of Studio Becker Xu, a Chicago-based architecture & design studio dedicated to exploring meaningful ways of engaging our built environment, asking how can design help cultivate a sense of place and activate multiple scales of community? Her experience building academic and cultural spaces as well as student & affordable housing in Boston, New York, and Los Angeles informs her design approach as an architect and educator today.
She holds a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She currently teaches design studios at Illinois Institute of Technology. In her conversation with Julia Gamolina, Sharon talks about designing with empathy at all scales and the impetus behind her practice, advising those just starting their career to seek out meaningful experiences.
JG: I love your work, and the freshness of your projects, and want to start by taking a look at one of your vision statements, "Our studio is driven by a collective curiosity for what it means to be human." With this, what would you say your approach to architecture is, once you fulfill that curiosity? How has your approach evolved in 2024?
SX: When we first started our studio, we wrote that statement to capture what we hope to foster: design as a means of exploring places and people. For us, these explorations always begin with curiosity and empathy. What excites us about the discovery phase at the beginning of each project is exploring a new place, researching its history, and getting to know the community around it. I’m not sure our curiosity can ever be satiated; it’s the force that keeps us going. When I first moved to Chicago, I decided to take up teaching — partly out of interest, partly out of financial necessity. As an educator now, I find myself exercising curiosity regularly alongside my students. For me, it’s an essential part of practicing architecture: choosing to be a lifelong learner.
Learning Landscape, Sharon's thesis model from Princeton University. Courtesy of Sharon Xu.
One Lawndale Gathering Tree, Studio Becker Xu's contribution to the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival. Courtesy of Studio Becker Xu.
Now let's go back a little bit. Tell me about why you studied architecture, and how you chose where you studied architecture.
I spent the first six years of my life in China before immigrating to the US. The move was a pretty jarring displacement, going from the chaotic city center of Wuhan to the suburban fringes of St. Louis. I continued moving throughout elementary school and grew accustomed to feeling anonymous as the new kid while simultaneously standing out as usually the only Asian. I learned to assess my environment, and I became really conscious of how and why people interacted with their surroundings the way they did. These early relocations also bred in me a sense of placeless-ness growing up. Architecture was intriguing as an act of place-making; to have some agency over your built environment was a foreign concept to me.
When I applied to MIT, I had this inkling of interest in architecture but not the confidence to commit. Both my parents come from science backgrounds, so science and engineering seemed like a natural path. I ultimately decided to pursue a more liberal arts discipline like architecture at a hands-on technical school, as a way of testing that path. After taking a few studios with radically contrasting design approaches — hand-sketching and clay models vs. using visual programming languages to model abstract space — I realized just how varied the field could be and felt there was so much more to discover.
What about for graduate school?
I had gained a couple years of work experience after college and with that, a growing sense of independence and desire to question what architecture could be. I looked for a program that I felt could help me apply the abstract design techniques I had learned at MIT in meaningful ways and that’s what drew me to Princeton. In my time there, I learned to question everything! I spent more time in the library researching, writing, and reflecting than I ever did at MIT, which really evolved my outlook on the agency of the profession. In a way, MIT helped me learn how to design while Princeton helped me understand why design matters. Princeton was also where I met Robert, my now partner in design and life.
“In our studio, we don’t always start with a prescribed workflow. Our process is very much alive and influenced by who we’re designing for.”
Tell me about your experiences working for various offices before starting your practice. What did you learn that you still apply today?
During college, I was grateful to have found opportunities for hands-on experience designing and building, outside of studio classes. I took an externship at Safdie Architects, my first glimpse into a working architecture office. I spent more than two months painstakingly constructing a detailed exhibition model at NADAAA. I traveled to Madrid with a team to build an architectural installation at ARCO Art Fair. Through all this, I never witnessed what it fully meant and took to actually design a building. Instead, this nimbleness of architecture, operating in a range of environments, at a range of scales and media, is something I take away from that time and still value as an architect today.
After college, I collaborated on the design and coordination of PedX at Payette before deciding to go back to school. After grad school, I set out to LA to take a position at Michael Maltzan Architecture. It was there that I got my first chance to work on the design of a building — and not just one type but many, from cultural institutions to student dorms to affordable housing. I got to know all the phases of a project, from conception to construction. It was a very intense and rewarding period, and I came out of it with greater insight into how buildings function and more valuably, a better understanding of who I was designing for and how architecture matters for real people.
A memorable full circle experience for me was presenting to MIT students at a meeting for their future residence hall. It was this moment of clarity where I felt I could listen to those on the receiving end of what we do from a place of total empathy. This has affected how I design now, more empathetically and dynamically. In our studio, we don’t always start with a prescribed workflow. Our process is very much alive and influenced by who we’re designing for.
Dogtrot House, Studio Becker Xu's recently completed first ground-up project. Photography by Keith Isaacs.
Chicago Coach House, Studio Becker Xu's renovation of a historic carriage house from the 1800s. Photography by Brian Griffin.
How did Studio Becker Xu come about?
Studio Becker Xu emerged from a series of conversations between myself and Robert during a cross-country move in 2021. The pandemic was well underway and we had just been asked to design a house for family living out in North Carolina. At that time, the prospect of being closer to family, coupled with a design opportunity we couldn’t pass up, inspired us to take a chance on moving back to the Midwest to start our practice.
In that multi-weeklong conversation during our drive from LA and Chicago, we shared with each other everything from our philosophical thoughts on the future of architecture to our anxieties about starting a business and designing a single-family house, two things neither of us had much experience in. The space of the open road and the feedback loop of discussion and inspiration gave me the courage to believe we could start something together.
What are your priorities for the practice as we enter 2024?
I want to focus on becoming more civically active here in Chicago — our projects here have gotten me more invested in the questions facing our city, regarding neighborhood disinvestment, the sustainable adaptation of existing building stock, and small urban living. These are very big questions, but through the small projects we’ve taken on so far as a practice, I’ve come to recognize the big impact that any sized project can make. So, at the moment, we are appreciating the intimacy that the design of smaller spaces brings, both in the one-on-one relationships that are forged through the process and the ability to treat each project with a deep level of care and attention.
“Even if the experiences you are accumulating don’t always feel coherent, the meaningful ones have a way of coming together.”
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
One of the continual on-and-off challenges for Robert and me is the delicate balance of living, working, and doing business together. As a collaboration born out of the pandemic, we are comfortable working from home and currently operate our practice from one floor of the townhouse where we live. Most of the time, this is an efficient and motivating way to work, but of course there are also times when life and work naturally clash. Being sensitive to each others’ cadences for concentration and creativity is a skill we are actively building together in our practice and through teaching. A small behavior we’ve started implementing that has helped is simply shutting the office door at the end of the workday!
Also, being a young practice, two of our toughest challenges right now are maintaining financial stability while balancing professional and personal endeavors that we find meaningful and navigating the joy and struggle of charting and constantly recalibrating a path of one’s own. I am learning to be more patient with the process and to be OK with not having it all figured out while persisting in doing what I believe in and enjoy.
Who are you admiring now and why?
Given the overwhelming saturation of media surrounding events around the world right now, a group of people that have been on my mind lately and that I greatly admire are photojournalists. My dream career as a child was actually to be a photojournalist. Reflecting back on that, I think I admired them for their intrepidness, their dedication to capturing honesty and emotion, and their ability to tell human stories through their work.
Sharon and Robert exploring Chicago. Courtesy of Sharon Xu.
Playing with models. Courtesy of Studio Becker Xu
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And, what does success in that look like to you?
Design can be so instrumental in provoking the imagination and offering unexpected ways of experiencing the world anew. Right now, I am enjoying designing spaces, no matter how small, that surprise, delight, and inspire. My hope is to bring these feelings to everyone we work with — clients, collaborators, community — and that with these incremental moments, we can build toward a broader mission of providing optimism for those who don’t yet have access to inspiration in their environments.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all when it comes to advice but there are some things I like to remind my students and also things I am constantly still reminding myself. I’d say to be be curious and enthusiastic, genuinely. Listen and learn from whomever and wherever you can, avidly. Open yourself up to unfamiliar experiences, boldly. Give yourself permission to explore, tangentially. Even if the experiences you are accumulating don’t always feel coherent, the meaningful ones have a way of coming together.