Architecture Professor Wins UC Berkeley Emerging Designers Competition

Assistant Professor of Architecture Catty Dan Zhang has won the 2019 University of California (UC) Berkeley College of Environmental Design “Emerging Designers” competition. As the winner, she will receive a $5,000 honorarium, an exhibition of her work in the College’s Wurster Gallery, a reception, and the opportunity to deliver a public lecture.

Dan Zhang’s project, The Moving Air: A Cultural-environmental Paradigm will be a multimedia exhibition showcasing a series of projects about airflow that she has developed during the past few years, including VENTS (2018), FANS (2017), Medium Matters (2016), and MASKS (2015).

“The submission proposal stood out as being an installation of devices that would engage the entire college with both beautiful drawings and interactive experiences,” wrote Renee Chow, dean of the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, in the award letter.

The exhibition will take place January 12-February 29, 2020.

Pictured: A detail from VENTS, which was installed in the Storrs Gallery in the School of Architecture in October 2018 as part of SEE-ING: The Environmental Consciousness Project. Image by Ben Premeaux.