Xun Liu’s research explores how emerging technologies shape design methods, knowledge, and practice. Working across architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design, she focuses on computational design and generative AI as creative and analytical tools. Her interdisciplinary work connects quantitative analysis with design inquiry and draws on methods from engineering, urban studies, and human-computer interaction.
She directs the Generative Environments Lab (GenEnv), a UBC research lab that develops and critically examines AI-enabled tools and workflows for the built environment. Her current research is supported by NSERC, SSHRC, and additional academic and industry funding. Current projects develop human-AI co-design frameworks that integrate performance analysis into early-stage design and investigate how agentic AI can make complex regulations and urban knowledge more accessible to designers, communities, and the public.
GenEnv is currently recruiting PhD students through SALA’s PhD in Design, Technology and Society program. Prospective students interested in human-AI co-design, performance-informed design, agentic AI for urban systems, and interdisciplinary approaches to AI and the built environment are encouraged to review GenEnv’s current opportunities.
Before joining SALA, Xun taught at the University of Southern California and the University of Virginia. Her professional experience includes the NYC Department of City Planning, Stoss Landscape Urbanism, and the Office for Urbanization at Harvard GSD. She is also the founder of xlstudio, a technology-design studio working across digital media, fabrication, and spatial design. She received the Jacob Weidenmann Prize and the Irving Innovation Fellowship while at Harvard GSD. Her research and design work has also been presented through exhibitions and curatorial projects internationally, including the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale.
Education
Ph.D., University of Virginia
MLA, Harvard University
B.Arch., Tongji University