Grace Cheung is a Taiwanese-Canadian architect and co-founding principal of XRANGE Architects, a Taipei-based practice established in 2003 with industrial designer Royce YC Hong. Educated at Columbia University and licensed in the United States, Cheung brings a multidisciplinary background shaped by formative work at OMA, Patkau Architects, and Bernard Tschumi Architects. Her architectural agenda is driven by contextual precision, spatial clarity, and material economy—values that define XRANGE’s body of work across architecture, landscape, infrastructure, and urbanism.
XRANGE’s projects often navigate the intersection of form, fabrication, and public interface, producing typologies that respond to climatic, cultural, and infrastructural conditions in Taiwan and beyond. The firm was named among Wallpaper magazine’s “101 of the World’s Most Exciting New Architects” and included in Phaidon’s Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture with its inaugural Ant Farm House. More recent works include the Landscape of Traces at the Taiwan Rail Museum, the Penghu House, which received a 2021 AIA International Design Award, and the Wandering Walls project, which was an Archdaily Building of the Year Nominee 2023 and listed among Archdaily’s Best Architectural Projects 2022.
Cheung continues to advance XRANGE’s research-led and materially attuned approach, working across scales to frame architecture as an evolving interface between environment, program, and public life.
What inspires you?
Believe it or not, I can be inspired by anything, even the way light falls on a certain material can trigger a concept for architecture. I draw a lot of inspiration from art, not directly from its form per se, but from the ideas and emotions they evoke, like a body reaction that triggers multiplying thoughts.
What inspired you to become an architect?
I had always drawn and created as a child, and by the time I was 6, I wanted to be an artist. That eventually gave way to fashion design (perhaps more commercially tangible) by age 10, and somehow got morphed into being a doctor — the combination of my parents’ aspirations, my good grades, my craft adept handiwork, and my love of the sciences when I was 16. Then, 2 weeks before college started, I chanced upon this small black and white book in the library, “4 Fathers of Architecture,” on Mies Van de Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, and Corbusier, and realized right then and there that my calling is architecture. It hit me like a super bolt of lightning, its clarity left no doubt whatsoever.
How would you describe your design philosophy?
To make the best possible project for the site, by respecting the context without succumbing to it, to find the most original expression; to make poetry arising from site forces, climate, budget, availability of materials and resources, and a sense of purpose — what my architecture will bring, the changes that it can absorb and inspire on this land for this community. Ultimately, I am inspired by constraints. The greater the limits, the more creative and free my designs can fly. My architecture brings together close integration with its surroundings, unexpected material tectonics, pragmatic but inventive solutions that are inimitable elsewhere.
What is your favorite project?
My favorite project so far is the “House of Reeds,” a halfway house or sanctuary for teenage girls that had suffer abuse. The site is a heinously hostile combination of steep terrain, rainy microclimate, compromisingly insufficient solar exposure, straddling a water way, not to mention on-site habitats of free roaming wild boars and snakes. This is undoubtedly the worst site I’ve ever encountered in my entire professional career. It took us 3 times as long to arrive at the only viable solution that we are very proud of.
The design has a roof profile — inspired by reed flowers — that is aligned to available sunlight for different activities throughout the day. The low, organic massing forms hug the hilly terrain, presenting a cascading rockscape that becomes a waterfall during rainy season as the entry point to the site and building.
This is a pro-bono project our office is doing to give back to communities in need, and we are currently assisting the stakeholders in setting up the legal conditions of the project. Hopefully in a few years time, we will have completion photos to share.
What is your favorite architectural detail?
The Wandering Walls’s stair concrete block detail railing really represented the unpredictability on site and our adapting to it on the fly. The original railing design was made in metal mesh, but as the client failed to find workers even after seeking over 20 bids, we had to first find materials available immediately and then redesign the railings to fit into what had already been constructed. This resulted in the unique “staggered and gapped” masonry block design and the bespoke cross-shape stainless steel connectors we created for lateral stability, truly a one-of-a-kind opportunity for us.
What is your process for starting a new project?
Listening to the client, research, observations, and clarifying available resources are important starting points for us. We go through a period of fact-finding and evaluation to qualify if the project conditions are favorable for us to achieve a high level of design integrity and innovation. We think this is a crucial step to maximize our chances of project success.
At the same time, we will also explore what the key social and cultural agendas are for us, what our opportunities for experimentation are, what the potential new points of view we can bring to the project type, etc.. All the above are a complex web of factors we go through for every project. If all goes well, we will arrive at the crystallization point when the concept clearly emerges.
How do you balance function and creativity in your designs?
To me, function isn’t a balance to achieve but a grounding MUST. The building has to work well, this is not negotiable. We thrive on finding creative and unique solutions to enhance the building’s function and performance. taking these seemingly mundane aspects seriously is a real way towards experimentation and craft. There will always be elements in the design that we are free to challenge and see if we can deliver better and more unique takes. The function and creativity balance is really an ever-shifting one, some days it’s all about setting up the most efficient solutions, other times, it is a free play of seeing how we can create better and more inspiring designs.
How does the environment influence your work?
The environment factors greatly in how we design. Failure to address this has serious consequences for the client, such as energy consumption, improper moisture barrier, etc.. We take these as pre-design fundamentals that must be complied with. Having established that, our design concept is built on top of these environmental requirements. On the other hand, we also work very hard to have an architectural presence that works in harmony with the environment, and will go to great lengths to integrate the environment (views, elements, landscapes) into the spatial experience. Architecture is inseparable from the environment and its users in every sense of the word.
How do you collaborate with clients to achieve their vision?
I’d like to listen to the clients’ story on what motivates them, why they are making the project, how they envision its future to be, and the meaning it brings to them. In getting to know the client, we try to understand what drives the client, and ultimately, the engine for making this architecture.
After we have a good idea of this, we will push ourselves to see if we can deliver qualities that go way beyond what the client can ever expect. We are in the business of “trust” with the client, as this is the only way to realize great projects, as solution partners in the dynamic, ever-changing conditions of realizing the architecture.
What architectural trends inspire you right now?
I never follow what’s out there, and don’t use references to design. I don’t follow popular trends, as that is useless in helping us navigate the specific site, building, and cultural conditions we encounter. When I visit great buildings, my instinct is to understand what made this building great, how it moves me (if it does.)
What inspired the design of the Winbond Building?
For Winbond Building Corporation, a total memory solution provider in Taiwan, the Zhubei building is designed to reflect the client’s core value of fostering well-being for workers, and commitment to ecological preservation and education. The design goal was to provide a green Gold Energy listed (the second highest energy designation in Taiwan), people-centric workspace for collaboration and sharing while working within the uniform efficiency of cubicles that accommodate the legions of high-tech workers occupying 19 floors of offices.
The concept of Green Pockets as places for physical and mental recharge becomes the driving force for the architecture. Green Pockets are refuge areas of greenery for resting, mingling, brainstorming and informal meetings away from the uniformity and long hours spent at the cubicles. Vertically stacked, these Green Pockets become large-scale “flutings” on the tower and form the wavy design of the Tower of Green Pockets.
The form concept produced great environmental benefits upon solar heat gain analysis. Unlike a large, flat, south-facing curtain wall surface, which would get constant direct solar exposure throughout the day, the wavy flutes of the tower create vertical shadow zones that glide across the tower’s elevation throughout the day in the exceedingly hot summers. In the winter, the wavy folds become favorable heat traps. The temperature of the curtain wall thus stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
How did materiality manifest in the House of Music?
Designed for two musicians, a symphony conductor and an award-winning oboist, House of Music is a six-story family home in the Shilin district of Taipei.
The design concept places the music room, called the Music Box, as the central organizational element of the house. The Music Box is a place for making music, whereas the concrete tower structure of the house becomes a “reverberation chamber,” allowing the couple’s musical synergy to float throughout the house across different floors and during separate activities.
The design concept expresses the clients’ belief that the act of music should not be hidden behind soundproofed doors but should be immersive in everyday living activities. The house thus becomes a spatial musical instrument, where one can appreciate music in any corner of the house, whether cooking, eating, sitting, or sleeping.
The Music Box on the third floor sits in the middle of the five story house, a vertical sound and light channel that links the living areas below and the bedrooms above, and has auditorium-style seating to accommodate both formal recitals and impromptu gatherings.
The Music Box is built from 400 walnut angled panels, 150 of which are operable, forming a porous screen system to the living areas, bedrooms and bathrooms. Sections of this screen system can be opened or closed independently, thereby allowing sounds from the Music Box to be “tuned” in and out depending on spatial use and occasion.
The exterior design is inspired by musical notations, with windows dancing like black notes on the horizontal line patterns cast into the concrete. The windows defy the convention of following the sizes and functions of the spaces behind, they are intentionally non-hierarchical and are placed to express rhythm and musicality on the building exterior.
Throughout the interior, the use of brass, cork, and other materials commonly found in musical instruments further enhances the concept of the house as a musical instrument. The wine cellar in the basement with a generous capacity of 1,500 bottles is inspired by red wine swirling freely in a glass, its organic form in bold purple marries the client’s favorite color with his passion for wine.
What advice would you give to young architects?
Have the courage to be different, for this is the only way to explore and develop your own voice.
