Where Flamingos Return, Life Returns:
Cultivating Biocultural Futures for the Salar de Atacama
@gsd_mla@harvardgsd
Option Studio
STU 1407: The Intelligence of ScarcityïŒLessons from Atacama
#landscapearchitecture
First option studio fieldtrip @harvardgsd@gsd_mla
The Intelligence of ScarcityïŒ Lessons from Atacama
I started to become deeply interested in flamingos in this region. In Atacama, flamingos are signs of water, of fragile wetlands, of memory, and of the cultural worlds that water makes possible. Fieldwork here has made visible how lithium extraction, water privatization, and conservation regimes are not separate forces, but overlapping systems that reshape land, life, and belonging. What is being lost is not only habitat, but also the relationships between ecology, labor, ritual, and community. The question is not only about how to protect nature, but how to confront the political and cultural conditions that make certain lives, landscapes, and futures more expendable than others.
Curious and excited to see where the design project will lead :)
Sand Corridor: Moving, Producing, Playing
Core III studio
@harvardgsd@gsd_mla
Sand Corridor reworks an abandoned highway embankment at Rumney Marsh, constructed from imported glacial sand that now traps sediment along the marsh edge. Rather than treating the embankment as a static barrier, the project redesigns sand movement by intentionally coupling human actions with coastal dynamic processes.
The project begins with a simple question: when we move sand, who benefits?
It proposes transforming the embankment into a productive recreational corridor by partnering with the international sand sculpture festival to help close local, waste-derived material loops. In this system, each act of moving sand supports both coastal resilience and biodiversity.
Three objectives guide the design: reduce sea level rise risk, close local material loops, and create a corridor that supports social life and ecological continuity. These strategies are tested through four sections, each offering a distinct timescale of engagement and environmental performance: the glacial sand walk, the shell sand garden, the glass sand maze, and the river sand mounds. Together, they show how sand, water, habitat, and programmes evolve over time, reframing the embankment as shared sand infrastructure for social resilience and ecological recovery.
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Design with Ghosts
Location: Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland
It advocates solidarity between humankind and non-humans as essential for resilience, inspired by Heimaeyâs community response to the 1973 Eldfell eruptionâresidents who stayed, cooled lava, cleared tephra, and rebuilt their home.
Grounded in Timothy Mortonâs symbiotic real and Anna Tsingâs ecological entanglements, the project unfolds in three stages:
Remember, honouring ecological memory through Icelandic burial rituals interwoven with biodiversity;
Re-enact, transforming past human actions into ecological regeneration by reusing local waste; and
Reconnect, cultivating empathy through immersive sensory paths inspired by selkie myths.
This progressive journeyâfrom memory, through action, to empathetic experienceâmoves beyond anthropocentric landscapes, embracing landscape ghosts as active design partners.
Ultimately, these interventions form a Solidarity Landscape, where human livelihoods, biodiversity, and cultural identity continually haunt and co-construct each other, fostering meaningful coexistence and mutual resilience within shared ecologies.
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Rejuvenating Icelandâs lava tunnel đŠâđ„đŠâđ„ as part of a territorial expedition (design strategy) in the Laki lava field.
Used casting techniques to model four existing lava-cave types, exploring their potential as part of the soil lab along the territorial expedition.
Skylight tunnels
Open vertical conduit
Lava raise cave
Rootless cones
Academic Portfolio crafting
In my last semester at the University of Edinburgh, we were asked to compile four years of work into a single portfolio. I wanted it printed on a warm, tactile material, something durable enough to keep at home âforeverâ!
The portfolio centers on spatio-temporal thinking, traced through a shift from digital abstraction (pre-exchange in Australia) to embodied experience (post-exchange). To register this transition, I structured the book around two spatio-temporal models: one built on linear time, and another organized as spiral time, inspired by spacetime concepts in relativity.
The format can be read in multiple ways: as a long, continuous panel encountered through movement (almost like reading while walking up a stair), or as a book you can flip through page by page.
It became a fun experiment in material testing, structure and sequencing!
#landscapearchitecture
Life at home: drinking tea, walking through family tea farm, eating loads of fresh fruit, and flying with my niece and nephew đ€Ș
I left home the year my nephew was born. Heâd only seen me on a phone. When he finally saw me, he said, âMy è è uncle is actually alive!â
5 years in Edinburgh
Graduated with friends
Everything flew by â missed hugs, didnât get photos with everyoneâŠ
But I left with more than a degreeïŒ
Wishing all my friends a bright and shining future ahead. âšâšâšđ«¶
