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CHINATOWN STITCH PILOT PARK


Chinatown, Philadelphia
YH Lab
04.23.2025

Furniture prototypes to go in a pilot park in Philadelphia’s Chinatown. The pilot park is intended to provide much need community open space, ahead of the completion of the Chinatown Stitch, a highway cap park. 


with Yadan Luo  & Joe Bondi

LANDSCAPE MONITORING

EMLAB, The McHarg Center - University of Pennsylvania
2023 - present
Coastlines are retreating upland faster than at any time in recorded history. As dunes erode and coastal marshes vanish, the urgency for adaptive strategies along the littoral edge grows. In response, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has placed increasing emphasis on experimental sediment placement techniques to restore and stabilize these vulnerable wetlands. The success of these interventions depends on careful monitoring and analysis.

To support this effort, the EMLab is partnering with The Wetlands Institute and USACE to monitor an active sediment placement site on Sturgeon Island, located in New Jersey’s Great Sound Bay. As an experimental marsh nourishment project, Sturgeon Island serves as a testing ground for understanding the long-term impacts of sediment addition. Our team is using a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to collect high-resolution multispectral imagery and LiDAR data. We process this data using a custom land cover classification system, developed in collaboration with The Wetlands Institute, and analyze it to calculate landscape metrics that reveal how the island’s ecology and form are shifting over time and in response to the sediment placement.

with Keith VanderSys & Sean Burkholder
THE EMERALD NECKLACE’S 
MISSING LINK


Charlesgate - Boston, MA, USA
Landing Studio
Summer  2023
The Charlesgate project aims to restore the broken link in the Emerald Necklace Park System -- connecting this park to the Charles River Esplanade and restoring the Muddy River’s ecological infrastrucutre performance. In the 60s, the Bowker roadway overpass severed Charlesgate’s function as a public park and created additional stormwater discharge. This project aims to provide new public programming under the underpass, improve runoff management, water quality and provide habitat opportunities. The project is in collaboration with The Emerald Necklace Conservancy, Charlesgate Alliance, Massachusett’s Department of Conservation and Recreation & MassDOT.


LANDSCAPE ROOMS: REPRESENTING 10 NEW ENGLAND ECOLOGIES

Stevens-Coolidge Place - The Trustees of Reservations, North Andover, MA
Mikyoung Kim Design
2019- 2021
Landscape Rooms reimagines an early 20th-century estate landscape as a dynamic place for ecological education and immersive seasonal experience. The project introduces a series of contemporary “ecology rooms”—garden spaces designed to interpret and showcase the diverse ecologies of New England. These new garden rooms complement and extend the site’s historic formal gardens, offering visitors a layered experience that merges cultural heritage with ecological awareness.

Located on the site of a former farm, the Stevens-Coolidge House and Gardens carries a rich agricultural and horticultural legacy. In collaboration with The Trustees of Reservations, we developed a phased master plan to expand and diversify the botanic collections while preserving the estate’s historical integrity. Each new room has its own distinct identity and function—ranging from a vibrant native meadow supporting pollinators, to a perennial garden that emphasizes texture and seasonal change, to a cut flower garden that invites sensory interaction. Together, these gardens create a rhythm of discovery as visitors move through the site, deepening their connection to both place and landscape process.

with Yufan Gao

 Photos by Robert Benson, courtesy of Mikyoung Kim Design

BUILDING PLAY, TOGETHER

Kisoro, Uganda
Global Design Initiative for Refugee Children

2020 - 2021
The Ineza Children’s Centre is a non-profit that  provides education and health services for local youth, with a focus on young girls. GDIRC was brought on after the original playground design exceeded the donor’s budget. With no local precedent for playgrounds and limited construction expertise, the project required close collaboration with the school principal and Foundation director. Together, we developed a cost-effective solution that met the school’s needs. The initial wooden playhouse—featuring a slide, fire pole, bridge, and ladder—was reimagined in steel and concrete to reduce costs and align with local building practices.

The project began at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a challenge to remotely identify materials and construction techniques that would ensure safety while also providing an engaging and challenging play environment for the students. To see more of my work with GDIRC, click here.


Photos courtesy of GDIRC.
INTEGRATING WATER & LAND SYSTEMS

Texas Medical Center Helix Park - 
Houston, Texas
Mikyoung Kim Design
2019- 2021
Located within the Brays Bayou floodplain, the Texas Medical Center’s research campus is situated in an area highly vulnerable to flooding. In response, the landscape is designed not just to withstand water—but to embrace it. A continous sequence of gardens weaves through the campus, functioning both as a vibrant public realm and as a performative landscape that accommodate water during major storms. The design elevates the gardens approximately five feet above the base flood elevation, allowing them to manage runoff from a 200-year storm while maintaining accessibility and visual continuity with the surrounding campus. Realizing the project required careful grading and coordinating the water feature functionality.


with Conner Cunningham & Jess Hamilton

 Photos: Robert Benson & Luis Ayala, courtesy of Mikyoung Kim Design.

VERTICAL TRANSITIONS

Countway Library Plaza Renovation - Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA
Mikyoung Kim Design
2019- 2021
The Harvard Medical School Countway Library was my first project with full day-to-day responsibility as a project designer, from Schematic Design through Construction Administration. This small-scale intervention creates an accessible connection between a sunken Brutalist-era plaza and the street, 10 feet above, while transforming a street-level back-of-house space into a public plaza. Navigating complex elevation changes, irregular site conditions, and a tight budget tested our problem-solving skills. 


 Photos by Anton Glass, courtesy of Mikyoung Kim Design.


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