Pu “Melody” Zhao

Being recognised by the London Design Awards is both deeply humbling and incredibly meaningful to me. It feels like a gentle affirmation that the values I hold close—community, justice, cultural memory—have a place in the global design dialogue.

As someone who has always approached design as a way to give voice to the overlooked and create spaces that heal, connect, and empower, this recognition tells me that those intentions are being seen and felt. It’s not just a personal milestone—it’s a reminder that design rooted in empathy and care can resonate beyond borders.

This award also honours the people and stories that inspire my work—especially those from underrepresented communities. It gives me the encouragement to keep showing up, to keep listening, and to keep designing with tenderness and purpose.

Winning the London Design Awards for Belinda’s Petition has been incredibly meaningful. It brought wide visibility to a project centred on the lived experience of Belinda Sutton and the often-overlooked history of enslaved women in the northern United States.

To have this story seen, shared, and honoured by so many has been deeply moving—and a reminder of the power design holds to surface truths that have long been buried.

This recognition has reaffirmed my commitment to socially engaged design and encouraged me to further explore how landscape architecture can serve as a platform for historical justice and emotional healing. It has sparked new opportunities for collaboration, research, and public engagement, and strengthened my belief that centring voices like Belinda’s can transform both our built environments and the narratives we carry within them.

More than anything, this award motivates me to keep designing spaces that are not only beautiful, but brave—spaces that invite reflection, acknowledge pain, and hold space for resilience and hope.

Experimentation is at the heart of my creative process—it allows me to move beyond conventional narratives and tap into the emotional depth of a place or story. Especially when designing around difficult, painful histories like slavery, I believe abstraction and material exploration can help access what words often fail to express.

One example is a conceptual model I call The Emotion Incubator. Inspired by Daniel Libeskind’s reflection on the “violence of forgetting—the violence of not seeing,” I created this piece to explore the inner emotional worlds of enslaved individuals, especially women whose voices were never recorded but whose pain still echoes.

The model consists of a transparent acrylic base—rigid, linear, and structured—symbolising the oppressive systems that shaped their daily realities. Flowing above it are delicate layers of fabric, suspended and in motion, representing the intangible emotional states—grief, resilience, yearning—that moved through them.

The fabric appears weightless, yet anchored by piercing columns beneath—each a metaphor for the traumatic memories and lived experiences that shaped their identity and survival.

Through this model, I wasn’t just building a form—I was listening. I asked, What are the voices whispering to us? How can we, as designers, make space for those whispers to be heard?

Experimentation gives me the freedom to ask these questions and to create work that speaks to emotion, memory, and humanity in a deeper way.

For me, the most powerful and unusual source of inspiration isn’t a physical object or material—it’s the hidden stories behind history, especially those that have been neglected or forgotten.

In Belinda’s Petition, the inspiration came from diving deep into the history of slavery in the northern United States—specifically its ties to Harvard University and the Royall family.

What struck me wasn’t just the historical facts, but the emotional contrast between the grandeur of the Royall estate and the daily lives of the enslaved people who lived and laboured there—especially Belinda Sutton.

By examining the evolution of slavery’s legacy, tracing its institutional connections, and grounding the research in the specific sites of the Royall House and Ten Hills Farm, I began to uncover the emotional topography of the place.

That’s where the design revealed itself to me—through the emotional phases I interpreted from Belinda’s journey: Strive, Determination, and Hope.

This layered understanding allowed me to move from the macro scale of social structures and landscape history to the micro scale of daily rituals and emotional memory. It was this unusual lens—history as emotion, history as lived experience—that shaped the entire design narrative.

It taught me that inspiration doesn’t always come from what we see—it often comes from what we choose to listen to.

I wish more people understood the quiet power of simplicity in design—the kind of simplicity that doesn’t come easily, but only after deep research, emotional labour, and countless iterations.

When working on Belinda’s Petition, I immersed myself in the painful and complex history of enslavement, especially the lives of women like Belinda Sutton. I experimented with many forms, geometries, and narratives, desperately searching for a way to express their stories with the emotional weight they deserved. But again and again, those attempts felt forced, disconnected, or overwhelming.

It wasn’t until I stripped everything back and focused on one elemental gesture—a rammed earth wall—that the design finally found its voice. That single wall became the narrative spine of the site. It weaves through the landscape, transforming in form as it moves through chapters of Strive, Determination, and Hope, quietly holding memory, pain, and resilience within its earthy materiality.

This taught me that the most powerful design often comes from restraint—not from how much you add, but from how deeply you understand what to hold onto. Simplicity, when rooted in truth, can carry immense emotional and narrative strength.

I’ve had the opportunity to lead several projects in China—particularly for institutional spaces like high school campuses. These projects often required navigating a complex balance between innovation and tradition.

In campus planning, functionality and formality are usually prioritised to reflect the school’s professionalism and cultural identity. The site layouts tend to be symmetrical, grand, and structured, emphasising a sense of order and academic prestige.

However, many of our clients came to us hoping for something bold, creative, and new.

The challenge was clear: how could we introduce fresh, innovative ideas without disrupting the architectural language of the site? A fully parametric or radically expressive landscape would have felt out of place and likely raised concerns.

So as a team, we looked for moments of subtle invention. We introduced creativity through smaller interventions—curved benches, playful pavement patterns, and thoughtfully placed gathering spaces that encouraged interaction and exploration. These design elements added character and warmth without compromising the larger formal framework.

That experience taught me that staying true to your ideas doesn’t always mean making big statements. Sometimes, it’s about listening closely to context and finding quiet, powerful ways to insert beauty, joy, and creativity—without losing harmony with the bigger picture.

Belinda’s Petition was one of the most emotionally demanding and creatively complex projects I’ve ever worked on. The biggest challenge was carrying the weight of such a painful history—how to honour the lives of enslaved people, especially women like Belinda Sutton, with the dignity, care, and emotional depth they deserve.

Translating their experiences into spatial language wasn’t easy. I struggled with how to represent grief, resilience, and hope without being too literal or overly symbolic. I went through countless iterations—exploring different geometries, forms, and storytelling strategies—but many of them felt either too decorative or too abstract to carry the emotional weight.

Eventually, I realised the power of restraint. The breakthrough came when I focused on one single design gesture: the rammed earth wall. It became the narrative spine of the project—shifting in form and presence as it moved through the phases of Strive, Determination, and Hope. That clarity helped the whole design fall into place. It allowed me to tell Belinda’s story in a way that was grounded, poetic, and emotionally resonant.

Another challenge was working with limited visual documentation of Belinda’s life. I had to piece together fragments from historical archives and read between the lines with empathy and imagination. It was not just about designing a site—it was about listening deeply, feeling with care, and creating space for stories that had been silenced for too long.

When I hit a creative block, I’ve learned not to force my way through it. Instead, I step back and seek inspiration from outside the world of design. One of the most unexpected sources that recharges me is watching the film Chronology.

There’s something about the pacing, the cinematography, and the emotional weight of the story that helps me reset my thinking. It slows me down, pulls me into a different narrative rhythm, and gives me space to feel—rather than overthink.

Sometimes, creative blocks aren’t about a lack of ideas, but a lack of emotional connection. This film helps me reconnect to that inner spark.

Afterwards, I often return to my work with a clearer head and a softer heart—ready to approach the design not just with strategy, but with soul.

I’m deeply driven by the desire to honour the strength and unseen voices of marginalised communities—especially minority groups whose histories and contributions are often overlooked. For me, design is a form of storytelling and emotional restoration—a way to hold space for voices that were once silenced and to reimagine futures rooted in inclusion, resilience, and care.

This value has guided all my projects, not just Belinda’s Petition. In a past project, I worked on an inclusive park proposal to revitalise the Philadelphia waterfront pier—a historically charged site—into a commemorative immigration park.

It was about creating a place where diverse cultural memories could coexist, where the immigrant journey was not just acknowledged, but honoured through layered spatial narratives and sensory experience.

During my undergraduate studies, my thesis focused on transforming a former landfill into a public park through land art. It was a meditation on renewal—how even sites of trauma, waste, and neglect could be reclaimed and reimagined into places of beauty, reflection, and community gathering.

Across all of these works, I carry the same belief: that landscape has the power to heal, to witness, and to quietly affirm the worth of every person and every story.

One of the most meaningful pieces of advice I received came from Professor Niall Kirkwood while I was studying at the Harvard GSD. He said, “Make friends across different fields—fashion designers, artists, writers—because that’s where new ideas are born.” That really stayed with me, and it continues to shape the way I approach design today.

I believe true creativity doesn’t come from staying within the boundaries of one discipline—it comes from looking outward, from letting your imagination be shaped by unexpected influences.

Personally, I love exploring abstract art to understand form, texture, and emotional resonance. I also draw inspiration from fashion shows and fine art—observing how movement, material, and narrative come together in beautifully expressive ways.

To aspiring designers, I’d say: Stay endlessly curious. Don’t limit your sources of inspiration to architecture or landscape alone. Let music, film, textiles, sculpture, or even poetry inform how you think about space. The more you allow yourself to be inspired by the world, the more layered and soulful your design voice will become.

If I could collaborate with any designer, it would be Sarah Sze. Her Fallen Sky installation at Storm King left a lasting impression on me. There’s something profoundly poetic in how she works with time, reflection, and fragmentation—turning subtle shifts in light, weather, and perception into part of the artwork itself.

What draws me to her work is the way she blurs the boundary between sculpture, landscape, and experience. Fallen Sky doesn’t dominate the land—it listens to it. It invites you to slow down, to see your own reflection in the mirrored stone, and to become part of something both intimate and cosmic.

That sensitivity to material and emotion, that sense of ephemeral beauty, deeply resonates with how I hope to shape space in my own work.

I think a collaboration with her would open up new ways of thinking—about narrative, impermanence, and how art and landscape can move people in quiet, transformative ways.

The question I wish people would ask is:

“I feel like I heard their voices in your work—was that your intention?”

To me, that would be the most touching recognition. Because yes—my deepest intention is to create spaces that listen. Spaces that carry the quiet strength, pain, and resilience of those whose stories have long been unheard. If someone feels a sense of presence, of remembrance, or even a calm that invites reflection, then the work has done what I hoped it would.

I don’t believe design has to shout to be powerful. Sometimes the most profound experiences come from stillness—from subtle textures, gentle gestures, and the emotional undercurrents of space. My work is my way of whispering back to history, and of creating moments where people can pause, feel, and connect.