Hung-Yu Chu

Hung-Yu Chu (朱弘煜) is a licensed architect, urban researcher, and architectural historian from Taiwan, and an SMArchS Urbanism candidate at MIT. His research explores the relationships between architecture, cities, and cultural landscapes, examining traditional settlements and their environments through an anthropological and spatial perspective.

He received his Bachelor of Architecture with academic honors and Master of Science in Architectural History and Theory Studies from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). During his exchange at the National University of Singapore (NUS), he explored diverse architectural and urban contexts across Southeast Asia, including UNESCO World Heritage sites, which further developed his interest in the cultural and historical dimensions of the built environment.

His academic and professional work has included the National Heritage Conservation Project for the Tainan City Walls and research on postwar Taiwanese architecture. His master’s thesis, Resilience in the Unseen: Hsiu-Lien Wang’s Selected Architectural Works and Her Era, received the Thesis Award from the Architectural Institute of Taiwan.

Before joining MIT, he worked as a Project Architect at  Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects in Paris, contributing to architectural and exhibition projects across multiple scales, from private residences to museums and cultural institutions, with projects spanning Asia and Europe. Prior to his work in Paris, he practiced with several architectural offices in Taiwan, gaining experience in projects rooted in local contexts and built environments.

Through architectural practice and historical research, he is interested in how drawing, mapping, and spatial analysis can reveal the layered narratives of cities and cultural landscapes, and how these readings can inform contemporary architectural and urban practice.