Architecture & Fine Art

Building worlds
from the inside out.

I work across architectural modeling, painting, and drawing — drawn to the interplay of emotion, structure, and perspective.

Ching Yu Dai

About me

Emma

Hi, I'm Emma (Ching Yu Dai).

I'm an architecture student and artist with a practice rooted in concept-driven making. My work begins with an idea — a feeling, a film, a historical text — and finds its form through model-building, painting, and drawing.

I'm drawn to the spaces between things: the tension between structure and fragility, the way scale shifts perception, the emotional weight that materials can carry. Whether I'm constructing a 50-inch architectural model or working in oil on canvas, the question is always the same — what does this space feel like from the inside?

Architecture Model-making Oil painting Drawing & illustration Art installations

Portfolio

Emotions — add project photo

Emotions

Clay, wooden sticks, PVC, steel wire

2022 · Individual work

Chinese Era — add project photo

Chinese Era

Wooden strips, PVC boards

2022 · L16×W17×H14 in

Life Orbit — add project photo

Life Orbit

Wooden strips, PVC boards

2022 · L16×W17.5×H14 in

Block — add project photo

Block

Dutch paper, wooden strips

2022 · L40×W17×H24 in

Tokyo-3 — add project photo

Tokyo-3: Transition Space

Wooden strips, PVC boards

2021 · L40×W40×H50 in

Art Installations — add project photo

Art Installations

Mixed media, LED light

2022 · Individual work

Paintings — add artwork photo

Paintings

Oil on canvas

2021–2022 · 16×20 in

Drawing — add artwork photo

Drawing

Ink, pencil, mixed media

2021–2022 · Various sizes

Resume

Education

Architecture

Your University — update this

2022

Skills

Model-making

Clay, wood, PVC, paper, wire, LED

Fine Art

Oil painting, ink drawing, illustration

Design

Spatial composition, concept development

Selected works

Emotions

Three-part architectural model series

05/2022

Chinese Era

Tian Gan Di Zhi hexagonal labyrinth

09/2022

Tokyo-3: Transition Space

Large-scale architectural installation

07/2021

Life Orbit

27-unit interconnected staircase model

04/2022

Block

FSA archive–inspired structural study

03/2022

Writing & notes

On building emotion with material

Why smoothness, roughness, and hollowness can say more than any color palette.

2022

What a brick taught me about scale

Notes from Tokyo — on the way distance changes what we're allowed to see.

2021

Junk food, bubble tea, and the ideal house

How collecting trash from a summer became an architectural statement.

2022

Let's talk.

Open to collaborations, commissions, and conversations about architecture and art.