Yoeun (Yona) Chung is an urban studies scholar whose work examines the relationship between cultural change and the built environment. Her academic and professional practice spans teaching, research, writing, curatorial work, and urban design.
Her doctoral dissertation, Consuming Aspiration: Lifestyle Transformation and Spatial Imagination in Seoul’s Korean Wave Scenes, investigates how lifestyle transformations associated with processes of individualization have reshaped Seoul’s urban geography since the mid-1990s. Her current research extends this work through studies of amenity geographies, cultural scenes, building adaptation, and the capacity of existing urban fabric to accommodate social and cultural change.
Chung has authored and contributed to books and scholarly publications on design, urbanism, and cultures of consumption. She is co-author of Design Thinking and Storytelling in Architecture (Birkhäuser, 2024), Metabolism and Reuse (L’Échappée Belle, 2026), and Space, Time and Circumstances in Architecture (Park Books, 2027).
She recently co-curated A Temporary Exhibition of Temporal Public Spaces, a traveling exhibition featuring emerging design practices from Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand. First presented through Harvard GSD Exhibition at Frances Loeb Library in 2026 and subsequently exhibited in Taipei, Hong Kong, and Seoul, the project examines how contemporary designers engage temporality as a distinctive way of living well amid uncertainty through reuse, maintenance, and intelligent forms of public intervention.
Chung received both her Master of Architecture in Urban Design (MAUD) and Doctor of Design (DDes) from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Prior to joining the GSD faculty, she practiced design at firms of varying scales, including SOM and Grayscale Collaborative.