Meixi Xu Believes that Design Should Enhance One’s Quality of Life

The School of Visual Arts interior design student pays attention to what a space may intuitively lack in community or belonging.

By: Laura Feinstein

Meixi Xu, a former senior interior design student at New York’s School of Visual Arts, loves to sketch. “Drawing helps me better understand the relationship between spaces and moments,” she says, noting that her design inspiration often comes from everyday observations, including attention to what a space may intuitively lack in community or belonging. 

In her project Hydroasis, Xu reimagines Manhattan’s postindustrial Chelsea neighborhood as a waterefficient urban utopia, with buildings outfitted with hydroponic stairs and water-screened elevators. Inspired by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s Centre Pompidou, and the literary works of Italo Calvino, she imagines her buildings as living organisms capable of enhancing their inhabitants’ quality of life. “People can engage with the building by learning and practicing sustainable energy and harnessing natural resources for the betterment of the planet,” Xu says. Hydroasis also includes an educational component empowering residents to learn skills in urban organic food cultivation, composting, and responsible waste management.

“Over half the world’s population has come to live in cities. Urbanization has moved to the center of the environmental debate,” she explains, noting that her past experiences as a student working on social design challenges for groups like Gensler and Champalimaud Design have ultimately influenced her decision to pursue architecture at the graduate level—with a focus on built environments and sociology. “I’m trying to create something that is not buildable now because what we can build now is not enough,” she asserts. “I want to create something beyond ‘now.’”