Jiayi Li

Jiayi Li is a SMArchS Urbanism candidate at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Her research focuses on sites of transformation, where tensions between past and future, development and conservation, and human and ecological systems intersect. She investigates territories as collective landscapes where social and ecological systems continually reshape one another. 

Prior to MIT, she received a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice School of Architecture, where her thesis Liveliness of Rocks investigated the adaptive reuse of mining byproducts in post-extraction landscapes. She also served as Research Lead and Content Curator for Weaving Ecologies in the Plantationocene, a project exhibited in the arsenale at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Professionally, she has worked at Thomas Phifer and Partners and Turenscape, contributing to architectural and urban design projects focused on adaptive reuse and ecological urbanism. Her work explores how design can engage processes of change and foster reciprocal relationships between people, materials, and environments.