Welcome new staff members in the Department of Architecture

The Department of Architecture at XJTLU is excited to welcome new staff members: GianMarco Longo and Lei Feng. With their various experiences, they make an excellent addition to the existing team. Having them on board, the Department is able to further improve the teaching quality, expand the faculty capacity, and provide excellent education for our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

GianMarco Longo
Assistant Professor of Practice

Career:

Before joining XJTLU, I had an extensive professional and international experience. In the last 8 years, I had the possibility to work in China for local and international firms to design award-winning projects like shopping malls, offices, etc.

Be an architect is much more than a just profession. I chose this field because I really love to design and create something new and unique every time. What I’m the most passionate about is the design process in which I can share my ideas with students and colleagues to find the best solution.

I love seeing projects being completed. It’s always a very special sensation when you walk through an architecture that in the beginning was only one of your ideas and then built according to your design.

(Wuye Binhai Mall, Gold Mantis Enterprise Suzhou, 2022)

Research interests:

Architecture and Design are human-centered disciplines. Our work is a process that emphasizes and builds empathy between the designer and the final user. Human emotion is an important factor while designing architecture because when architecture connects emotionally with people, it is able to give a deeper and enduring impression.

For the academic and research community, I hope my research can create a new designing and teaching approach where different departments work together to shape human behaviors and the impact to the environment.

For the general public, it’s very important to educate people about the historical importance and the ecological footprints of an architectural project with its context by a social and economic point of view.

I have been working in China since 2014 and it gives me the possibility to see a very fast architectural and urban growth. Working as an architect here means I have the chance to get in touch with different project typologies and scales, which is a very competitive market and at the same time gives you endless possibilities to research, learn and experiment something new and unexpected.

In the future, I hope to work on more competition projects and create a bridge between the different XJTLU design and engineering departments.

(Sany HQ Kunshan, Gold Mantis Enterprise Suzhou, 2019)

Reason to join XJTLU:

I joined XJTLU because it represents the perfect combination of the western and eastern culture, and it has a completely new and international approach where both students and academics have the ability to gain knowledge thanks to the multicultural context.

Advice for students:

Be passionate, try to experiment and learn as much as you can now. Academic years are very important for an architect formation.

Lei Feng
Assistant Professor of Practice

Modules:

ARC 102 Design Studio: Small Scale Architectural Design

ARC 108 Construction and Materials

Career:

Artistic practice has been a central part of my life from a young age, and the field of architecture, which I’m currently working in, is a beautiful combination of science and art, intertwined with many other disciplines, such as sociology, economics, etc.

I’m a trained interior designer and work on a daily basis in the architecture field in artistic practices. Since 2000, I have been involved in international art exhibitions in China, Austria and other countries. My works have been exhibited in Beijing (798), Belgrade, Brussels, Budapest, Maidstone, Vienna, Washington D. C. and Zurich, among many other places.

Since March 2008, I have been an Associate Architect and Project Coordinator for the Austria-based international architecture office Coop Himmelb(l)au（CHBL）, and participated all of CHBL’s China projects. I have been the Director of CHBL Foreign Affairs (China Region) Since 2012, and am currently the CHBL China Office Director.

Research interests:

I’m currently working on a thesis Alternative Screens in Western Avant-Garde Cinematic Practices: A Media Archaeological Approach to Site-Specific Screening, which explores the relation between moving images and the physical environments where they are viewed by concentrating on alternative screens in Western avant-garde cinematic practices. It is dedicated to combined architectural and media study disciplines.

For the academic community, the research employs a crossover strategy so as to dissolve rigid disciplinary boundaries and look into the intersection between film and architecture, pay close attention to reviewing the potential of “inter-relations” and “inter-influences” among various disciplines.

The contemporary daily life has been screen-mediated, by film screens, video screens, computer screens, cell phone screens, etc. Screens are flooded in work and leisure moments. Coming from an architectural background, while our lives are becoming Metaverse-lized, I’d like to emphasize and remind that there is also a site-based rather than sight-based visual culture for the contemporary life.

Reason to join XJTLU:

The Department of Architecture is dynamic, energic and future oriented. I chose to join XJTLU for new challenges and new experiences.

Advice for students:

Architecture isn’t all about rules and regulations - try to question the discourse. Always try out new things, get out of the comfort zone, embrace changes.

By Yi Qian

Photos provided by GianMarco Longo and Lei Feng