Wai-Piu Wong (principal)
Wai-Piu (Dip Arch, MA) qualified as an architect in 2004 and has worked and collaborated with award-winning practices since this time, most recently with Gort Scott Architects. With DSDHA and Cottrell and Vermeulen Architecture he has worked on education and community buildings that have been award winning and published widely.
In conjunction with practice, Wai-Piu is also a design tutor at undergraduate and postgraduate level, having previously taught at the University of Cambridge, Cass Architecture School, Central Saint Martins, Nottingham University, and currently Sheffield University where he is the studio leader for the Urban Ecologies studio, which looks at regenerative design as a tool to tackle the climate crisis and build resilient communities. His studio teaching focuses on the need to understand a given site, topographically, ecologically, and importantly at the human level. Designing community engagement programs with local residents is as important as learning to design buildings, while developing sustainable building briefs that are appropriate to the community, sympathetic to the context, and fitting to the city.
Research output with the students has included, ‘The Caledonian Road, Living on The Edge,’ ‘Along The A11 from Whitechapel to Bromley-By-Bow, A Linked Campus,’ ‘Camberwell, A Place for Interventions.’