Lexi Tsien

Lexi Tsien is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia GSAPP, a designer based in New York, and co-founder of Soft-Firm. Lexi is interested in new forms of representation, vernacular spatial practices, and their ability to shape and self-determine the built environment. Her interdisciplinary practice, Soft-Firm is a flexible platform off which to expand design hunches into architectural ideas, spaces, and artifacts. Their work is speculative and concrete: taking a playful and lo-fi approach to visual perception, elemental forms, and material contrast. Soft-Firm pursues progressive and collaborative programs to promote agency and equity, seeing architecture at the intersection between culture and built infrastructure. The practice has designed interactive exhibitions, residential and commercial projects, and public installations.

Their work has been featured in Metropolis, Surface Magazine, Architect Magazine, Architectural Record, AN Interior, and on PBS Newshour. Lexi earned her M.Arch from the Yale School of Architecture and has a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Visual Arts from Columbia University. She has taught representation courses and design studios at the Yale School of Architecture, the Rhode Island School of Design, Parsons The New School, and The Cooper Union. Prior to forming her own studio, she worked at Bernard Tschumi Architects and Diller Scofidio in New York and Barkow Leibinger in Berlin.