We are thrilled to share a reimagination of our logo in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by featured artist Yujin Cao. Her practice explores the fluid boundaries between memory, landscape, and the imagined—a dialogue between origin and movement.
For this piece, Yujin drew inspiration from the Tulou, historic rammed-earth communal dwellings in southeastern China where entire clans lived and worked together. Built using local materials and knowledge rooted in place, Tulou functioned as self-sustaining villages, vessels of kinship, memory, and cultural continuity. In her work, Yujin transformed our “U” into a Tulou suspended among drifting clouds, a setting sun, and phases of the moon. Through this composition, she invites us to recognize home not as a static origin, but as something carried across distance, continually reimagined through memory and movement.
As designers and builders, what can we learn from the Tulou? As we continue to address housing, communal, and ecological challenges, what is required to cultivate the kind of culture and communal living we know to be possible? Join us for an artist talk with Yujin later in May to explore these questions.
Thank you Yujin for reminding us that architecture is not separate from culture—that at its best, it is culture made spatial.
Click here to learn more about Yujin’s practice and see more of her work, including her recent installation “Crossroads” at Boston City Hall.
Please join us at Utile for Yujin Cao’s Artist Talk on Thursday, May 21st from 5:30 – 6:30pm!
