Gabe Lei

Gabe Lei is an SMArchS Architectural Design candidate at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work emphasizes the tension between natural and processed materials, permanence and expiration, and representation and construction. Drawing on his experience in professional practice, he is interested in the temporal conditions and qualities of architecture, from the aging of materials to the changes of occupation. Through mock-ups, prototypes, and unfinished constructions, he explores sites of negotiation between design intent and material agency. His current research focuses on architecture's capacity to accommodate processes of transformation, questioning conventional expectations of completion, preservation, and control.