On October 15, 2025, AIANY Emerging New York Architects (ENYA) was pleased to host our monthly committee meeting, featuring Poyao Shih on “Scale Up, Scale Down.”

Poyao is Founder of Position Studio and Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute School of Architecture. He reflected on his career spent moving between the extremes of design scale—from the headquarters of Quarra Stone and Mission Rock Block B at WORKac, where questions of infrastructure and urban systems dominated, to installations for Höweler + Yoon and Sarah Sze during his time at Quarra, and later collaborations with artists Kate Williams and Hannah Evans through Position Studio, alongside the award-winning X-Site Pavilion in Taipei. Poyao’s work demonstrates how design intelligence shifts across vastly different contexts.

Drawing from both professional and academic projects, Poyao explored how lessons learned at one scale can be applied to another—how the thinking behind large-scale frameworks can inform the intimacy of interiors and installations, and how the precision of detail-making can strengthen approaches to urban complexity. This presentation invited reflection on what it means to continually “scale up, scale down,” and to use design as the driving tool across every dimension of practice.

During the Q&A session, Poyao shared his inspirations throughout his education and career, his interest in human-scale and user-oriented design, the give and take of academic pedagogy, and the moment he decided to start his own practice.

Special thanks to Karen Rose Cover, Associate Director of Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation Career Services, for sharing our event with the GSAPP community.

This event was moderated by Hao-Yeh Lu, Co-Chair of AIANY Emerging New York Architects, with photography by Chia-Han Lin.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and we hope to see you at the next ENYA event!