Dr. Yiqiu Liu

Yiqiu Liu (刘奕秋) is an urban rese­ar­cher, desi­gner, and architect. 

She holds both a BA and a MA in Archi­tec­tu­re from Sou­the­ast Uni­ver­si­ty, Nan­jing. Her rese­arch focu­ses on poli­ti­cal eco­lo­gy, sta­te space, and urban Chi­na, with a par­ti­cu­lar focus on inves­ti­ga­ting con­tem­po­ra­ry Bei­jing through the frame­work of pla­ne­ta­ry urba­niza­ti­on. She recei­ved her doc­to­ra­te in 2023 from the Depart­ment of Archi­tec­tu­re at ETH Zurich under the super­vi­si­on of Chris­ti­an Kerez and Chris­ti­an Schmid. Her dis­ser­ta­ti­on “Limits on Growth: Urba­nisati­on Pro­ces­ses in the Exten­ded Bei­jing Regi­on” pres­ents an encom­pas­sing ana­ly­sis of the urban deve­lo­p­ment of the enti­re Bei­jing regi­on in the last two decades.

Sin­ce 2025, she co-coor­di­na­tes the Swiss Net­work for Inter­na­tio­nal Stu­dies (SNIS) pro­ject “The Pro­duc­tion of Cloud: Ter­ri­to­ri­al and Archi­tec­tu­ral Stra­te­gies for AI’s Socio-Envi­ron­men­tal Foot­print”, which exami­nes how to theo­rise, design, and govern AI cloud infra­struc­tu­re in Switz­er­land, the United Sta­tes, and China.

Bey­ond aca­de­mia, Yiqiu Liu is a prac­ti­cing archi­tect and urban desi­gner with expe­ri­ence across con­ti­nents. She has led seve­ral award-win­ning pro­jectswith Chris­ti­an Kerez, recei­ved two 2024 UNESCO Asia-Paci­fic Awards for Cul­tu­ral Heri­ta­ge Con­ser­va­ti­on, and fre­quent­ly con­sults public and pri­va­te stake­hol­ders on spa­ti­al deve­lo­p­ment in Asia and Europe.

Yiqiu Liu: publi­ca­ti­ons

Yiqiu Liu: web­page