I am Yicheng Zhang, A second-year graduate student at Rhode Island School of Design Interior Architecture department specializing in adaptive reuse.

I have seven years of practice experience in the interior design field in Shanghai, China, and have been involved in more than 40 projects from a wide range of different design types, from working space design to hotels or commercial shopping mall design. With the opportunities to have a deeper involvement in projects, I gained practical skills from communication skills to project design, construction documents, and team management from early project development to integrated project delivery. In addition, I had the experience of a campus renovation project in Shenzhen, including campus landscape design, architecture façade design, and 14-floor interior design when I was a freelance in 2020. I lead a 2 people team for this project. This project has been completed, and the client is satisfied with our work.

At a certain point, it was getting harder to improve my design skills, and I decided to go back to college to become an expert on design strategy. While studying at the Rhode Island School of Design, I increased my creativity and opened my imagination to different design philosophies. The practical design in school, combined with the theory and design philosophy, will maximize my creativity.