WHEREABOUTS


Sean Yuxiang Li/  in English
Søren Yuxiang Li / på Dansk
李宇翔/  中文

Sean's work investigates the cultural and architectural significance of (pre)informal architecture and dissenting spatial knowledge, with a particular focus on the global (dis)entanglement of alternative urban spaces, androgynous spatiality, and migrant interiors. 

They aim to make sense of how we understand historical spatial practices that embody unthinkable yet lived contradictions—especially through the conflation of illegality with informality and the contested socio-architectural legitimacy that surrounds them. 

Sean’s works and words also probe the (non)spatial toolkits that render such contradictions intelligible, grievable, and enduring—while preserving the right to opacity. Meanwhile, they navigate their own positionality, moving between the guilt of weaponising identity and the urgency of mobilising it as a critical and situated lens.

Sean is an architect, artist, and research assistant at the University of Copenhagen in collaboration with the Museum of Copenhagen. have lectured at ETH, the University of Copenhagen, the Royal Danish Academy, and the Copenhagen Architecture Festival. Sean’s ongoing involvement with NGOs and volunteer organisations further demonstrates their commitment to bridging critical scholarship and hands-on community engagement.

architecture disobeys.

 +45 91191535
liyuxiangsean@gmail.com
yuxiangli@ign.ku.dk
yli@arkitekterudengraenser.dk





For scholarly, acquisition, or exhibition inquiries, please email:  liyuxiangsean@gmail.com.

WORKS


architecture/ art/ exhibitions



" Discreet Spaces, Affective Archives, Asian Journeys. " Contribution to Unmasking Space: Assembly—Exchanges on Student Activism, symposium, exhibition, and book launch, Ca’Buccari, Venice, 19–21 September 2025. Supported by ETH Zürich (Affective Architectures)

Art and Research Residency  (DK representative)  Centre for Nordic Otherwise | Nordic Culture Fund.

"Alternatives, Others, Archives, Games 123" Copenhagen Architecture Biennale 2025

"Dubious Architecture", P-L-A-T-F-O-R-M.DK.
Online in August 2024, on-site in January 2025. Copenhagen.

" Byen i Dig" (City in You) ", ROSPEKT SPACE, Copenhagen, September.

"Om at Organisere Arkitektur "
(On Organising Architecture),
WORKS+WORDS, Rundetaarn, Copenhagen, December.


01. On Squatting as a Spatial Practice.

02. The Habitatory

03. Clan. Community. Countryside

04. Dense yet Sparse

05. Authoritarian Boundaries, Fake Ones

06. Playable, Watchable, Walkable

07. Everyday Monumentality



WORDS


publications/ research



“Rearranging: The Danish Mess and the Making of a Multi-Scalar Diplomatic Interior in Beijing (1912–1920).” Paper accepted for presentation at the international conference Diplomatic Interiors: Spaces, Practices, and Infrastructures in Historical Perspective, jointly organised by ETH Zürich and the Geneva Graduate Institute,  2025.

“Archipelagos of Appropriation: Squatting Networks and the Decentralised Dissemination of Spatial Knowledge in Europe and beyond (1960s – Present).” Paper accepted for the 12th Annual JBSC Conference (Jaap Bakema Study Centre and Nieuwe Instituut), Rotterdam & Delft,  2025; 

“From ‘Vild med Vilje’ to Wild-on-Its-Own: A Queer Reading of Nordea’s Demonstration Meadow in Ørestad.” Paper accepted for presentation at 22nd International Conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA 2025), University of Liverpool, 2025. Session: “Masculinities, Landscapes and Environments,”

 "Nighttime, Discreet Time, Not-so-proud Time, On
queering as an art of noticing"
International Night Studies Conference (ICNS),
Lisbon,   2024

"Diasporic Domesticity: Three Asian Brides Named May"
Paper accepted for Edinburgh Architecture Research Journal

 " Androgynous Spatiality Through Urban Squatting."  European Architectural History Network (EAHN) 2024 

 "Unveiling Transformative Urban Dynamics: The Symbiosis of Squatting Movement and Urban Renewal in Copenhagen's Architectural Landscape."
The European Association for Architectural Education and the Architectural Research Centres Consortium（EAAE and ARCC） 2024

"Stop Painting, Stop Building."
Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur 7. (Magazine for Architecture and Culture) April

"Building Space of Appearance Together- On Squatting
as Spatial Practices." 
Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur 5. March

"FREJA - Socratic Yet Hedonistic."
 Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur 4. October

"Grass, Soil, Teahouse, A Romanticised Sustainability." KÅRK: Kaark_Magasin no. 41. July

"The True Void."
KÅRK: Kaark_Magasin no. 40.

WORLD-MAKING


volunteering / teaching/ affiliating



Presentations, “Affections as Method in Queer Spatial Practice”, Research Under for Rainbow Symposium, University of Copenhagen.

Presentations, “Occupied modernities”, TU Braunschweig for the GTAS PhD symposium

Guest Lecturer in Unmasking space, Chair of Affective Architectures, The Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich

Key member, the Diversity & Equality Platform, Akademisk Arkitektforening / the Danish Association of Architects

Key member, Architects without Borders Denmark

Volunteer for Caritas Retshjælp

Volunteer for  Bridge to China Charitable Foundation (HK)

Volunteer for  the Shanshui Conservation Centre

Volunteer to teach in the poverty-stricken areas in China with the Hongtu Aid Education Association

Lecturer in Material and Artful Approaches (Advanced Migration Studies Program), SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen

Keynote for the seminar at CIRCLES@, University of Copenhagen,

Keynote for "Building Diversity Sharing," by Building Diversity

Keynote for "Queering Space, Queering as an Art of Noticing," Copenhagen Architecture Festival X Film Mosaic, 

Host for "Local and International Perspectives in the
World Capital of Architecture, with UIA (International Union of  Architects) &Akademisk Arkitektforening (the Danish Association of  Architects), at the World Congress of Architects, 

"The Unique Case of Urban Renewal in Copenhagen," podcast episode in collaboration with Niels Bjørn and Københavns Kommune

On Illegality, Informality 
This body of work explores squatting not merely as a practice of resistance or housing strategy, but as a generative and contested spatial grammar that unsettles normative divisions between legality and informality, domesticity and publicness, modernity and its Others.

Framed through the notion of “Occupied Modernities,” Sean traces how squatted spaces produce alternative archives of urban life—foregrounding ephemeral infrastructures, gender-nonconforming spatialities , and transnational solidarities. Drawing on architectural ethnography, archival microhistory, and oral history, Sean’s research highlights how squatting intersects with urban renewal policies, protest memory, and dissident pedagogies. Their ongoing work aims to re-theorise the squatted interior and prehistories of squatting as both a space of (un)livable contradiction and a site of collective world-making.



  • “Archipelagos of Appropriation: Squatting Networks and the Decentralised Dissemination of Spatial Knowledge in Europe and beyond (1960s – Present).”                                                             Paper accepted for the 12th Annual JBSC Conference (Jaap Bakema Study Centre and Nieuwe Instituut), Rotterdam & Delft,  2025
  • "Unveiling Transformative Urban Dynamics: The Symbiosis of Squatting Movement and Urban Renewal in Copenhagen's Architectural Landscape."
    The European Association for Architectural Education and the Architectural Research Centres  Consortium（EAAE and ARCC）2024
  • "Building Space of Appearance Together- On Squatting
    as Spatial Practices."
    Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur 5. March
  • "FREJA - Socratic Yet Hedonistic."
    Magasin for Bygningskunst og Kultur 4. October
  • "Om at Organisere Arkitektur "(On Organising Architecture),
    WORKS+WORDS, Rundetaarn, Copenhagen, December
  • "The Unique Case of Urban Renewal in Copenhagen                 Podcast episode in collaboration with Niels Bjørn and Københavns Kommune

On Queering as a Method



This line of inquiry explores the architecture of opacity, minor affect, and spatial refusal across artistic, pedagogical, and diasporic practices. Working through performances, lectures, exhibitions, and collaborative fieldwork, this line proposes queering as an art of noticing—a method for attending to ungrievable, invisible, or quiet forms of spatial existence that evade dominant regimes of legibility.

Together, these works chart how migrant, diasporic, and androgynous subjectivities unsettle dominant architectural narratives, patching instead affective archives and discreet forms of world-building.

On Global, On Migrating





Here, I am asking how architecture and design practices were entangled in transimperial, colonial, and diasporic networks—often in subtle yet enduring ways. Focusing on the long arc between early 20th-century diplomacy and contemporary diasporic identity formations, the project traces how interiors, domestic artefacts, and spatial representations became soft infrastructures of state-making, cultural translation, and racialised difference around Denmark, China and the USA.

This strand is further animated by Sean’s sustained engagement in humanitarian and environmental work across China, Hong Kong, and Denmark—blurring the line between researcher, witness, and community member. Through these crossings, the research asks: how do we hold the fragments of a colonial-modern architecture accountable, and how might we reframe them through transnational solidarities, diasporic intimacy, and architectural care?
























 


Actually, No.
Year: 2025 (edition ongoing )
Medium: Handmade hemp / mixed plant‑fiber paper, chalk & charcoal, staples, Chinese brush & ink.
Dimensions: 450 × 2400 cm .





For acquisition, or exhibition inquiries, please email: liyuxiangsean@gmail.com.




    

On squatting as a spatial practice
Building Space of Appearance together

       







   

   













HABITAT- FACTORY

CLAN, COMMUNITY, COUNTRYSIDE


DENSE YET SPARSE

                                             

AUTHORITARIAN BOUNDARIES, A FAKE ONE


PLAYABLE, WATCHABLE, WALKABLE


EVERYDAY MONUMENTALITY



Friktion 3 - Dubious architecture

'Pigens år' - Spacegirls, 2024
Tekst ‘I have too many opinions’ af Sean Yuxiang Li, 2024
Kurateret af Sofie Højgaar
https://www.p-l-a-t-f-o-r-m.dk/articles/friktion-3---spacegirls-sean-li-yuxiang

*
I have too many opinions, i have always been the one who has too many opinions, and those opinions are always of course, emotional, thus irrational, thus personal, thus unprofessional.
Thus I should zip my mouth, like my ma always reminds me, don't embarrass her,
Thus I should forget about it like my bestie warned me, big brother is watching, don't put us in danger.
Thus I should keep my feelings myself, as my architecture professor reminds me, don't make him uncomfortable,
thus I should find empirical material to support my feelings otherwise consider removing this feeling, as my editor suggested to me, don't shame academia.

They are protecting me, they are protecting me from becoming me, they are protecting me from me, they are protecting themselves from me, from opinions, from emotions, from irrationality, from themselves.

I trust them, and my brain trusts them, but my body says the opposite, they are dubious, I don’t trust my body, I shouldn’t trust my body.
Nevertheless, they are dubious, one of my too many opinions, of course.

*
I am recovering from my relationship with architecture.
I feel less sexually aroused by the grand master's masterpiece, and I relate more to the interns and less to the master architects; more to the birds hitting the glass and less to the detail of glass; more to the nature erased by building less to the nature designed on top of the buildings. More to the homeless, less to the home; more to the public life, less to the public space, more to messy, less to hygienic.
I am not ashamed of my ancestor’s wood temple is not firmitas enough anymore, ornaments are not sissy, and dishonest, and architecture without architects is people s life than architects’ fetish.

I am giving up catching up with mastering skills on 10 different rendering modelling programmes; I spend less time with architecture; I am unbecoming the architect that I dreamed of, I am unbecoming the architect that I am scared of.
I am unbecoming.

Sounds like a breakup, but no, I am not done with architecture.

I wrote for the magazine during the day, stop building!
I wrote to apply for a job in the offices during the night, together we build!

It is a minor feeling, ugly feeling, paradox feeling, non-cathartic feeling, ambivalent or even explicitly contradictory feeling. (Ngai 2004)

Kind of like every time we cheer on a Thursday evening, we announce, I need a hero but I hate the man, I love cocks but I can't stand the man.

Sounds like I finally cured my homosexuality, but no, I am not done with man.

But no, I am not done with architecture.

Man, architecture is dubious, one of my too many opinions, of course.


*
Am I naturally dubious, or is it they, man, and architecture that embody dubiousness?

Since I have been apologising and taking the blame and ignoring my feelings and body for so long, excuse me, I am tired of taking the blame.

So, I am whining, gossiping, spellcasting, saying, announcing, declaring, defining,

Dubious architecture, Dubious architecture, Dubious architecture, man, they.

So, in order for you, my dearest friends, to sense and disarm,

I am making Sense of "Dubious" for you,

Dubious as a feeling embodies continuous doubt and scepticism.
It doesn't resolve into clear actions or solutions but remains a nagging, unresolved tension within one's interactions or perceptions.

Dubious as a Relational and Resistance Concept,
It shades relationships between things rather than just casting judgment. Calling architecture dubious, is acting as a minimal unit of resistance for those in precarious or marginalised positions.

Dubious is a feeling that leans towards walking sideways, giving side glances.
 To call someone or something dubious is the first step in shifting them from the subject to the object, allowing us, who have long been the object, to finally take the position of the subject.

*
"A well-off, well-educated young architecture professional earns less than a high school graduate working as a piccolo." (Furu 2020)

My teacher at the architecture school at the Royal Danish Academy has a superpower, he can read people's names and guess whether they are architects or not. I admired that superpower and read it as a dedication to the profession.
He said:” The trick is their family name and you know, it's a small community.”

I used to date far-right Danish people for fun and validation, one date told me, that the government should cut funding for architecture schools because it's only open to rich people.

I was hospitalised in Copenhagen for weeks, and my ward neighbour heard I was studying to be an architect. He and his wife told me it is a disgrace that your architect is making social housing into weird cock-shaped unaffordable housing.
I told them my friend works at that architecture firm as an intern, working at least ten hours a day, and needs to ask for help from her parents.
“That's karma,” said the wife

What is this karma about, why there is a karma?

Jokes, tricks, gossip, pillow talks, anecdotes, rumours, magics, journalism, they fly, infiltrate, contaminate, congregate, foment, ferment,
Into my body, into my feeling, into their body, into their feeling,
Inside wards, bedrooms, classrooms, workspaces,  
In arriving architecture.
Architecture is becoming a dubious profession, a precarious balance between labour exploitation, elitist education, and restrictive gatekeeping.

Here is another opinion of mine, my theory of karma.

After battling fierce competition and expensive preschool to enter the School of Architecture, students spend years mastering a vast array of technical skills: Revit, Rhino, ArchiCAD, CAD, Photoshop, Illustrator, SketchUp, Vary, InDesign, Grasshopper, ENSCAPE, and even coding, materials, laws, and structures. They’re expected to survive in a tough job market while also mastering the softer skills of the trade: making mock-ups, sketching, hand-drawing, critiquing neoliberalism, casually referencing Foucault and Deleuze in a Friday bar, and catching up with the literature and art movies,  and adopting an academic disdain for BIG's practices—all to fit the mould of elite architectural education.

Upon graduation, even those who meet these demanding criteria, find themselves earning wages comparable to high school graduates—if they’re lucky and good enough to gain experience at all.

This leads to a troubling conclusion, karma: the treatment of young architecture professionals is not a mere byproduct of the system but a deliberate mechanism within it. The so-called love and dedication to architecture, cultivated by elitist education, serves as the perfect tool for capitalism to exploit labour. Meanwhile, capital controls access to the profession, ensuring that only those with sufficient resources—often from affluent backgrounds—can survive and thrive. In this way, architecture becomes a gatekeeper, perpetuating a cycle of exclusivity and elitism that benefits the few at the expense of the many.

"The house is a machine for living in," cursed by the grand master, Le Corbusier, yet today’s architectural practices suggest that the architecture profession is more a machine for capitalizing on labour, architects work like a machine.

Machine produce products,

A cog in a system designed to maximize profit at the expense of the human spirit. The products that emerge from this process are less about innovation and more about perpetuating the status quo—a reflection of the mechanized, exploitative nature of the industry itself.

The profession becomes what it practices.

Karma after karma, machine reproduces machine.

“Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.” Leonardo da Vinci, great grand master's prophecy.

I touch machines, cuddle machines, kiss machines, smell products, taste products, and humanized products.

I feel nothing, the body of architecture, excludes bodies, but machines.

Giving side eyes telegraphs doubt, suspicion, and even contempt. (Hong 2020)

Dubious architecture, I knew it.

I give my side eyes.


 * Dubious architecture, Dubious architecture, Dubious architecture

Q: Could the architecture extend beyond merely constructing buildings?
A: “Architecture doesn’t mean only to create buildings in the public space but also to create debate in public space, through building and/or attitudes able to make a building.” — @François Roche (Budor 2017)

Q: Can architecture be reimagined rather than just an industry focused on building?
A: “Architecture is no longer understood as a practice that inevitably brings about the construction of an artifact but as a way of thinking, observing, and analyzing the present and the society in which we operate.” — @Giovanna Borasi (CCA, n.d.)

Q: Is it possible for the discipline of architecture to be enriched by embracing a wider range of artistic choices beyond object form?
A: “To do anything beyond object form is often treated as extra-disciplinary. However, aesthetic pleasure can come from doing something else, and this choice should not be denied.” — @Keller Easterling (Stein 2015)

Q: Is the notion of ‘political architecture’ merely an idealistic concept?
A: “To make political architecture is to do politically political architecture.” — @Jean-Luc Godard

Q: Could architecture resist the constraints of typified examples?
A: “The queer world is characterized as a space of entrances, exits, unsystematized lines of acquaintance, projected horizons, alternate routes, blockages, and incommensurate geographies.” — @Lauren Berlant (Berlant and Warner 1998)

Q: Might buildings serve as tools for controlling urban memory?
A: “The city claims an authority over its territory, constructing limits, exclusions, and silences, but also possibilities.” — @Samuel Burgum (Burgum 2022)

Q: Could architecture be migrant and unfixed?
A: “The intra-activity of connected timeframes, across territories through which architectures are negotiated, is itself migrant.” — @Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Rachel Lee (2022)

Q: Could architecture that prioritizes profit over people be inherently short-lived, with its value dying alongside exploited labour?
A: “Shun those studies in which the work that results dies with the worker.” — @Leonardo da Vinci

Q: Is it possible that architects overestimate their privilege, leading them to overlook their own labor struggles?
A: “Most architects are workers, whether they identify with the label or not.” — @Phineas Harper (Harper 2024)

Q: Is it possible that modern architecture perpetuates the commodification and exploitation of both nature and human labor?
A: “The scientific revolution transformed nature from terra mater into a machine and a source of raw material, removing ethical and cognitive constraints against its violation an exploitation.”—@Mies,M.&Shiva(Sollund2015)

Q: Form follows?
A: “Form Follows Love.” — @Anna Heringer

We are not alone.
Let me begin again,
I am writing this to me, you, we, my ma, my teacher, my architecture school, my future employee, my friends, my editor, My hierarchical, patriarchal architecture, my colonizer from the past life to today, my dictator from the past life to today, the sprite haute me from the east to west， my common sense, my saver capitalism, my grand masters, my star architects,

  I'll huff
  and I'll puff
  and I'll blow your house down.

A spectre is haunting.


Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Rachel Lee. 2022. ‘On Collaborations: Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration’. Aggregate. https://doi.org/10.53965/mdcb1441.
Berlant, Lauren, and Michael Warner. 1998. ‘Sex in Public’. Critical Inquiry 24 (2): 547–66.
Borasi, Giovanna. 2015. ‘The Other Architect: Another Way of Building Architecture, by Giovanna Borasi’, 2015. https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/articles/issues/20/the-other-architect/50960/another-way-of-building-architecture.
Budor, Dora. 2017. ‘Architectural Psychoscapes: Francois Roche — Mousse Magazine and Publishing’, 21 July 2017, sec. Conversations. https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/architectural-psychoscapes-francois-roche-2017.
Burgum, Samuel. 2022. ‘This City Is An Archive: Squatting History and Urban Authority’. Journal of Urban History 48 (3): 504–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144220955165.
Furu, Sonja. 2020. ‘Den underbetalte elite’. www.weekendavisen.dk. 22 December 2020. http://www.weekendavisen.dk/content/item/33436.
Harper, Phineas. 2024. ‘Why Do so Many Architects Think They Are More Privileged than They Really Are?’ Dezeen, 8 May 2024, sec. Architecture. https://www.dezeen.com/2024/05/08/architects-unions-phineas-harper-opinion/.
Herrero Lopéz, Yayo. 2010. ‘Ecofeminismo, una propuesta para repensar el presente y transitar al futuro.’ Socioeco.org. 2010. https://www.socioeco.org/bdf_fiche-document-8740_es.html.
Hong, Cathy Park. 2020. Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52845775-minor-feelings.
Ngai, Sianne. 2004. Ugly Feelings. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Sollund, Ragnhild. 2015. Review of Review of Ecofeminism, by M. Mies and V. Shiva. State Crime Journal 4 (1): 99–103. https://doi.org/10.13169/statecrime.4.1.0099.
Stein, Amelia. 2015. ‘Keller Easterling: Playing Spaces’, 15 May 2015. https://www.guernicamag.com/playing-spaces/
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔
SEAN & YUXIANG & SOREN & 李宇翔