Ziwei Li
Architectural / Interior Designer — Chicago, IL
Interior architectural designer based in Chicago, blending an interdisciplinary background in animation with human-centered spatial design — from concept narrative through construction detail.
Selected Work ↓Selected Work
5 PROJECTS SHOWN
01
A platform for daily life and disaster response, raised 31 feet above four underused lots in a residential neighborhood built on reclaimed land — doubling as everyday gathering space and, when the ground shakes, an emergency evacuation route.
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Rendering — Platform Overview
02
A 1915 terra-cotta office tower and a new neighbor are threaded together by a funnel-shaped atrium, turning student housing for SAIC into a building organized around shared light rather than a corridor.
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Rendering — Atrium Gallery
03
The former Meigs Field Airport terminal is reopened as a biophilic workplace — walls dissolve into fluid workspaces around a planted atrium, with Lake Michigan and the skyline framing sun-washed lounges.
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Rendering — Exterior, Northerly Island
04
A year-round botanical education center along the Loop's elevated tracks, organized around light, water, and plants — funnels in the folded roof channel water and daylight through the building as a visible process.
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Rendering — Exterior, The Loop
05
Construction detailing from an internship at Zhengyi Interior & Engineering, a mechanical/structural studio project for a Miami natatorium, and marker renderings — the range of hand and technical work behind the rest of the portfolio.
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Marker Rendering — Lounge Interior
About
I'm an interior architectural designer based in Chicago, with a NAAB-qualified education and an interdisciplinary path that started in animation before moving into spatial design. That background shapes how I work — I think about a space the way I'd think about a scene: who moves through it, what they notice first, and how the sequence unfolds.
In practice, that means pairing narrative thinking with technical rigor: developing ideas in Rhino and Revit, testing them through physical models, and carrying them through to lighting, material, and fabrication decisions on real projects.
BFA, Animation — Guangdong University of Technology
MArch, Interior Architecture — School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Teaching Assistant, Eco Design & Design Drawing — SAIC
3rd Place — Charles Peterson Prize Competition
Architectural Designer Intern — Zhengyi Interior & Engineering, China
Architectural Designer — Dingiding Gallery, Expo Chicago 2026
Contact
jerry130526@gmail.comPROJECT 01 / 05
Rendering — Platform at Dusk, Facing Tokyo Bay
The Irifune Root is a platform for daily life and disaster response, built above four underused open spaces in a traditional residential neighborhood in Urayasu, Chiba — land vulnerable to soil liquefaction since the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Raised 31 feet on an all-timber structure, it works as a gathering space day to day and an elevated refuge when the ground shakes.
Site
The project sits in Irifune 3-chome, Urayasu — land reclaimed from Tokyo Bay by the Japanese government in 1960. The opening of Shin-Urayasu Station gave the area strong transit links and turned it into a thriving residential neighborhood, but the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake caused severe soil liquefaction across the reclaimed ground.
Community
The neighborhood has a permanent population of about 1,600 and is aging quickly. Residents cluster around the station, while much of the community's own open space sits underused. There is no government-certified temporary shelter at the station or within the neighborhood — a real risk for elderly residents and children if a major earthquake or tsunami hits again.
Concept
To address both concerns at once, the design links four scattered open lots — a flower garden, a community playground, a public parking lot, and a vacant lot — with a single elevated platform. Built above rather than through the neighborhood, it protects residents' privacy at ground level while giving the community a shared structure built for both daily use and disaster response.
Disaster Response
Raised 31 feet above the surrounding rooftops, the platform sits clear of the highest recorded flood level and can hold hundreds of residents during an emergency. In the minutes after an earthquake it functions as an elevated refuge above the reach of a tsunami; in the weeks after, it becomes a staging ground for the trucks, cranes, and volunteers rebuilding below. Higher ground to the north and lower ground to the south are connected by ramps, so the platform stays reachable from the station in every scenario.
Structure
Structurally, the platform is built entirely from wood, using three connected systems: bundled columns joined by mortise-and-tenon joinery to distribute seismic loads with ductility rather than rigidity; V-shaped cable supports that minimize the structural footprint at grade, keeping the street clear below; and a suspension-bridge-inspired cable span for the long, column-free reaches between lots. Together they let the platform adapt to the site's unstable, liquefaction-prone ground instead of resisting it.
Experience
The platform offers residents a new vista over Tokyo Bay, quietly becoming a place to slow down and take in the everyday. Below, the neighborhood's existing functional spaces are preserved and reactivated — visual and auditory connections woven through the structure knit the whole community into one continuous, symbiotic space that keeps working for residents long after the platform's emergency role ends.
PROJECT 02 / 05
Rendering — Atrium Gallery
The Y Atrium adapts The Century Building — a 1915 steel-framed, terra-cotta-clad landmark on State Street — into student housing for the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, pairing it with a new addition next door. A funnel-shaped atrium threads both buildings together, drawing daylight down to a courtyard the surrounding block had never had.
Site
The project centers on The Century Building — a steel-framed Chicago landmark from 1915, faced in white glazed terra cotta — one block from SAIC's campus and its existing dorms. The design strategy keeps that historical character intact while adding what the building never had: space built for how students actually live today.
Concept
Because the building is boxed in by taller neighbors, its core suffers from insufficient natural light. A central atrium is cut through the structure, with openings sized to draw daylight through every floor — enough for the building to feel lit from the inside out, and for it to work as a place students actually want to live.
Structure & Program
The building reads as two volumes working together: the existing structure holds most of the living space, while the new volume to the south concentrates the building's core and the atrium itself, reinforcing the old building both functionally and structurally. A funnel-shaped glass atrium runs the full height of the building, from the 16th-floor gym down to the ground-floor gallery and lobby.
Experience
Exterior at Night, State Street
PROJECT 03 / 05
Rendering — Exterior, Northerly Island
Northerly Green reimagines the former Meigs Field Airport terminal (1948–2003) on Chicago's Northerly Island as a biophilic workplace, opening the building inward around a light-filled atrium where greenery — once absent from a place defined by movement and departure — threads work and rest together.
Site
Located on Northerly Island, between the Field Museum, Soldier Field, and Lake Michigan, the site carries the ecological character of the island's restored prairie and wetland — little bluestem, tussock sedge, great blue herons — right up to the building's edge.
Concept
Once defined by movement and departure, the building now opens inward — walls dissolve into fluid workspaces around a light-filled atrium, with greenery extending outward to stitch work and rest together. East–west views of Lake Michigan and the skyline frame sun-washed lounges, where the rhythm of daily work slows into quiet moments of calm.
Analysis
Native plants are brought indoors and woven into the landscape, blurring the line between interior and exterior. With planting as the organizing theme, a handful of techniques — as a wall, on the floor, around a column, as a roof — let greenery both divide and connect spaces, growing continuously through the building.
Plan
Experience
Material
Materials shift by room: soft green plaster and warm wood line the kitchen and informal work areas, while dark wood slats and a single lacquered orange door mark the meeting rooms — distinct atmospheres built from the same restrained material palette.
PROJECT 04 / 05
Rendering — Exterior, The Loop
Photosynthesis Crystal is a year-round botanical education and experience center in Chicago's Loop, organized around light, water, and plants — turning natural processes that are usually hidden into something visitors can watch happen.
Site
Sited along the CTA Loop tracks near several schools and pocket parks, the building is conceived as a shared amenity for nearby students, office workers, and residents looking for a moment outdoors, rain or shine.
Concept
The plan folds around the elevated tracks, with water gardens on either side feeding a central circulation system that runs light, water, and air through the building — the mechanics of plant growth made visible rather than hidden in a wall cavity.
Structure
In section, funnels of varying sizes puncture the folded roof, channeling water and daylight down into the building and, in doing so, letting the sound of falling water guide visitors through the space instead of signage.
Design Process
Early studies moved between hand-built models — a wheeled Wardian case for walking plants through the city, a folded-truss study model — and the finished building, so the project's environmental logic could be tested by hand before it was tested in section.
Ground Floor Perspective, Fountain Room
PROJECT 05 / 05
Marker Rendering — Lounge Interior
Beyond the single-building projects, this is where studio construction details, professional practice drawings, and hand-rendering work live — evidence of both the technical range and the drawing hand behind the rest of the portfolio.
Professional Practice
Drafted during an internship at Zhengyi Interior & Engineering under senior designer guidance — three construction details translated and annotated with material assembly information for portfolio presentation.
Academic Studies
A studio project for a natatorium in Miami, built in concrete with pilasters as its primary structure and a Warren 9 truss spanning 102 feet. A dedicated VAV system with separate dehumidification keeps moist pool air from reaching the rest of the building — mechanical coordination that doesn't show up in a rendering but has to be solved anyway.
Hand Drawing
Marker renderings developed alongside digital work, from quick interior studies to fully rendered perspectives — a way of testing material and light decisions by hand before committing to a 3D model.
