Ying moved to Charlottesville in 2019 from China to attend the University of Virginia, where she graduated with her Master’s degree in 2021. She grew up in an old town surrounded by mountains and rivers which informed her nature-loving and friendly personality. Ying is always a delight and brings a joyful atmosphere to her colleagues at BRW – she especially loves office visits from everyone’s dogs.

She didn’t believe in personality tests until the Meyers Briggs told her she’s an INTJ (the “architect personality”!) after she chose architecture to be her major. Ying is starting her licensure track at BRW.

In Ying’s eyes, architecture and buildings can be defined as different things: they can be “living creatures” which have their own functional system with humans running it; she can see the supporting structure as the skeleton of the building while rooms are organs and muscles. Buildings can also be stages where different scenes and stories can happen. Those fantastical views also give her multiple ways of designing a project: sometimes she imagines herself becoming the building with a steel-framed skeleton and glazing skin; sometimes she imagines herself to be the film director who sees clients staging productions in the building she’s working on. 

During school, Ying was focusing on theoretical and conceptual designs and was fascinated with graphic representation and narratives. She spent seven years building her macroscopical understanding before joining BRW in the Summer of 2021, where she is now diving into the functional details and building systems of architecture. In 2023, Ying obtained LEED Green Associate Certification.