Joshua Tan

Joshua Tan is a doctoral student in the history, theory, and criticism of art and architecture at MIT where he is currently a MIT Presidential Graduate Fellow and a Young National University of Singapore Fellow. He is co-editor of the peer-reviewed Thresholds 53: Idle (MIT Press, 2025). His recent interests are concerned with the role of industrial experts and architects in development, ranging from early carbon infrastructures of coal in East Asia to modern industrial planning in Southeast Asia.

After completing a M.Arch at Yale, Joshua received the Edward P. Bass Fellowship to examine working-class and public housing in London and Singapore at Cambridge University. His research has been published in Pidgin 32 (Princeton SOA, 2024), Dune 3 (Flash Art, 2022), and the Singapore Policy Journal (Harvard HKS, 2020), with an upcoming book chapter in Modelling Social Housing (Routledge, forthcoming 2025). He has also been invited to present at conferences organized by Aarhus University, Durham University, the Alvar Aalto Foundation, and the National University of Singapore.

With regards to teaching and design, Joshua has co-taught studios and electives at Yale and has been invited as a guest critic at MIT, Yale, and Cambridge University. He has won multiple design awards for his architectural competition entries (Buildner, The Big Thing, Non Architecture) and has worked in design practices based in Singapore and San Francisco. Currently working on an installation in Sarajevo, he has previously co-curated exhibitions on digital synchronization and traditional bamboo building techniques in New Haven and Singapore respectively.