The Next House: USA competition 3rd Prize winners - Chung Wei Lee, Yu Hsiang Lin and Buzz Wei

We’d like to take the opportunity to introduce you to the 3rd Prize winners of our The Next House: USA competition – Chung Wei Lee, Yu Hsiang Lin and Buzz Wei from United States!

Chung Wei Lee, Yu Hsiang Lin and Buzz Wei from United States

Please tell us about your company (when it was founded, where it is based, how many employees, etc) Alternatively, if you do not have a company, please give us some insights on your own professional/academia background.

Plan Plan is a New York-based transdisciplinary design studio for architecture, planning, and beyond. The studio’s name, Plan Plan, pairs two repeated words that can be read as both nouns and verbs, mirroring how our work shifts between states—thinking and making, research and play, nature and culture, architecture and non-architecture. These overlaps guide us in bridging different worlds and opening new possibilities for architecture. Through continuous dialogue, spatial intelligence, and thoughtful design studies, architecture becomes our tool for engaging proactively with communities and environments, and for responding to the many challenges and complexities of our time.

Brief information about the projects that you/your company have been involved with. For instance, what scale have you focused on/preferred, any significant projects where the company/ individuals have been Involved?

We work across scales, from objects and installations to interiors, homes, and educational buildings. What connects them is less a style than a set of questions. How can a space hold contrasting qualities, such as opaque and translucent, public and private, or traditional and contemporary, without forcing them to resolve? At Nin Hao, a restaurant in Brooklyn, translucent curtains and a polycarbonate wall turn daylight into a lantern at night. At CC Residence, we asked how modest materials could shape a flexible family home. In Taipei, we designed the Integrated Education Center at Zhong Zheng Senior High School with ARMU d+a, where we considered how a single building can support many kinds of learning at once.

What does architecture mean to you and what is the role of an architect in your society?

We believe that meaningful architecture and space emerge from curiosity, collaboration, and a deep engagement with each project’s context and environment. From ideation to realization, we work through an inclusive, transdisciplinary approach that brings together knowledge from different fields and perspectives rooted in varied cultural experiences. This breadth of viewpoint allows us to question assumptions, expand ideas, and reveal a project’s full potential.

Why do you participate in architecture competitions?

Competitions give us room to ask questions that commissioned work rarely allows. Daily practice, with its budgets, schedules, and codes, is essential, but it can slowly narrow what we allow ourselves to imagine. A competition lets us step back and test ideas we care about: architecture that is participatory, that changes over time, and that belongs to the public as much as to its designers.

What advice would you give to individuals who struggle to decide whether it would be beneficial for them to participate in architecture competitions?

Ask what you want to explore, treat the competition as a chance to research and develop your own thesis, then test it against the given contexts and constraints. Approached this way, a competition becomes a valuable experience even if you don't win, and the thinking you develop will carry into your future work.