Temporary Office /of architecture, design, technology

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Catty Dan Zhang is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at UNC Charlotte, and the founder of Temporary Office– a design and research firm exploring architecture and digital technology through the production of exhibitions, objects, drawings, animations, installations, and writings. Her work experiments with the multiplicity of techniques and mediums, translating ordinary objects into performative and synergistic systems to visualize and to modulate ephemeral forms. Her projects have received recognitions in AN’s Best of Design Awards (2019) and A+D Design Awards (2020). She was the inaugural winner of the Emerging Designer’s Exhibition competition hosted by UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design and delivered her solo exhibition “The Moving Air” in 2020. Her design work has been featured in group exhibitions at the 'T' Space, London Design Festival, Carnegie Museum of Arts, A+D Museum, Harvard GSD, among other institutions. Her recent work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, as well as several institutional grants during 2017-2022. Zhang was a finalist of the Harvard GSD’s Wheelwright Prize in 2018 and 2021. She was awarded the first prize in the Pamphlet Architecture 37 competition and will be authoring the next volume in the Pamphlet Architecture series titled “Active Atmospheres: On Instruments and Protocols for Medium Hybrids and Architectural Voids”. 

Zhang earned a BArch from Tsinghua University, an MArch with Honors from Washington University in St. Louis, and an MDes in Technology from Harvard University Graduate School of Design where she was the 2017 recipient of the Daniel L. Schodek Award for Technology and Sustainability.