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 researcher from TU Braunschweig for the GTAS, and has 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

"Alternatives, Others, Archives, Games 123"

Copenhagen Architecture Biennale 2025

Discreet Spaces, Affective Archives, Asian Journeys.

"

Contribution to Unmasking Space:

Supported by ETH Zürich (Affective Architectures), Ca’Buccari, Venice, 19–21 September 2025.

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

"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

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 Interior in Beijing (1912–1920).” Paper 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 Dissemination of Spatial Knowledge.” Paper for the 12th Annual JBSC Conference (Jaap Bakema Study Centre and Nieuwe Instituut), Rotterdam & TU Delft, 2025;

“From ‘Vild med Vilje’ to Wild-on-Its-Own: A Queer Reading” Paper accepted for presentation at 22nd International Conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association (AHRA 2025), University of Liverpool, 2025.

"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