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July 20, 2025
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Building Thoughtfully from New York to East Asia: The Design Practice of Qianhe Fan

Building Thoughtfully from New York to East Asia: The Design Practice of Qianhe Fan
Photo Courtesy: Qianhe Fan

By: Aize Perez

Qianhe Fan is an architectural designer whose work spans three countries, two languages, and multiple typologies—ranging from communal buildings in Brooklyn to large-scale commercial developments in China and international design competitions across East Asia and Europe. A graduate of The Cooper Union, Fan has cultivated a body of work that balances formal clarity with cultural responsiveness, resisting easy categorization in favor of layered, site-attuned design.

Fan began his architectural education at the Rhode Island School of Design before transferring to The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union, where he completed his studies. Known for its intensive focus on conceptual thinking and public discourse, Cooper Union helped sharpen what has become a signature of Fan’s approach: a commitment to architectural restraint without sacrificing intellectual depth.

Professionally, Fan has contributed to projects across diverse contexts and scales. At OBRA Architects in New York, he has worked on a range of public commissions, including the Van Dyke Boxing Club and the Brownsville Community Center—both initiatives by the New York City Housing Authority aimed at serving underserved communities in Brooklyn. These projects required careful negotiation of spatial programming, regulatory frameworks, and construction coordination, underscoring Fan’s ability to operate across design and delivery with equal rigor.

Fan’s role at OBRA has also extended to strategic planning and research-driven work. He was a key contributor to a feasibility study commissioned by New York State, which included site documentation, programmatic analysis, and visual communication. Rather than simply producing schematic concepts, the work focused on reframing architectural engagement as an instrument of institutional understanding—a mode that Fan has carried across much of his recent work.

Before joining OBRA, Fan gained extensive experience in China, serving as a Project Architect and Design Director on a number of high-profile commercial and cultural developments. These included open-air retail complexes, urban redevelopment projects, and a gut renovation of a public museum interior—many of which required coordination across architecture, landscape, environmental graphics, and branding. Early on, he also worked on office and exhibition interiors in fast-paced environments where the demands of production sharpened his adaptability and attention to detail. Together, these experiences laid the foundation for his later leadership of multi-scalar design efforts across key metropolitan centers such as Hefei, Chengdu, and Guiyang—contexts that called for both technical control and programmatic sensitivity.

Photo Courtesy: Qianhe Fan

Fan has also distinguished himself in the competitive design arena, participating in more than a dozen international competitions. These include proposals for institutions in Seoul, Shenzhen, Helsinki, and Jinju, where his work has received awards and finalist status. His approach to competition design often emphasizes typological ambiguity and spatial flexibility—using architectural form not to assert identity, but to open up conditions for interaction, adaptability, and meaning over time.

What distinguishes Fan’s trajectory is not only the scope of his geographic and project experience, but his consistency in holding to a set of architectural values. “I try to design buildings that don’t impose themselves,” he has said in past discussions. “Architecture should be critical, but that doesn’t mean loud. It should offer structure without overdefining the experience of those who use it.”

Currently, Fan is continuing his work at OBRA Architects while pursuing independent research and collaborations focused on cross-laminated timber (CLT), adaptive reuse, and the intersection between logistical design and public infrastructure. Whether designing a pavilion, reconfiguring an institutional interior, or framing a community facility, Fan brings the same clarity of thought and attentiveness to detail that has defined his practice to date.

With a growing portfolio that cuts across borders and scales, Qianhe Fan represents a generation of designers who see architecture not as a finished object, but as an evolving framework—one that accommodates complexity without spectacle and remains rooted in its cultural, physical, and temporal contexts.

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