Alex Yuen

Alex Yuen is an architect and urban designer. Hailing from Hong Kong and San Francisco, Yuen received a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design, with Distinction, from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

He is a co-founder and the Director of Design at CO-, an architecture, urban design, and real estate development firm based in San Francisco. As a single studio that engages in both design and real estate development, CO- balances concern for the character of its design investigation with handling the critical externalities that enable its ideas to become realities. CO- is intentionally hybrid. It designs some projects, develops others, and, often, handles both the design and development scope. Making housing, particularly quality affordable housing, is CO-‘s immediate and long-term focus.

Yuen’s individual design work and involvement in larger urban research projects have been published and exhibited globally. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Odebrecht Award for Sustainable Development, the William Ward Watkin Fellowship from the Rice School of Architecture, and the Award for Excellence in Urban Design, and the Urban Design Thesis Award from the GSD. His teaching and research at the GSD center on the experiential outcomes of urbanism, how cities are perceived, and how they in turn, change. His perspectives on urbanism have been featured in the Economist, NPR, and Fast Company.

Before teaching at the Graduate School of Design he taught at the California College of Arts and the University of Virginia while also having lectured on architecture and urbanism and serving on juries at institutions around the world. Prior to CO-, he worked at several Architectural and Urban Design firms around the US and Asia, including Diller Scofidio + Renfro and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Yuen is a registered architect in California.