Xiao Lin spent her formative years in the United States and China, and some of her fondest memories are those rooted in place, from the front door of the family home to the rooms inside. “I remember the kitchen where the meals were made and how everyone seemed to gather there, drawn by warmth as well as hunger,” she says.
Lynn earned a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania and then traveled early in her career. Whether it was in Beijing or Amsterdam, he realized that even the most exciting spaces are never truly finished until the occupants make them their own.
In 2022, Lin founded her own company, STUDIO XIAOin East Hampton, New York. Specializes in residential and commercial projects. As she develops an idea, she is guided by her belief that a building should be felt before seen.
Its characteristic structures are clean in form and respond to the natural environment and not separate from the landscape. For Lin, a complete building is what is truly an exciting synthesis of mood, sound and light, combined with her favorite materials.
Lin makes ceramics in her spare time and enjoys how the elements unfold. “Firing and glazing bring their own surprises, results you never fully planned for,” he notes. “There’s a looseness that architecture, with all its predetermined procedures, rarely gives you.”
Today, Xiao Lin is with us Friday five!
1. Birth Name Stone Seal
There is something quietly ritualistic about pressing stone to paper, pausing before, resisting the surface and then revealing. This seal bears my name in traditional Chinese, hand carved into stone, a tradition passed down through generations of artisans who understood that the act of marking is also an act of meaning. Each impression is never quite the same.
2. Carved Horn Head Massager
Cut from a single piece of horn, the object changes with use: the teeth become smoother where the fingers have pressed, the body acquires a tactile patina. The contrast between the rougher pits and the polished exterior tells you exactly how it has been held and by whom. It is a record of feeling written on the surface.
3. My Grandmother’s Sandalwood Mala Bracelet
My grandmother wore it every day and the wood knows it. The grain has softened where her wrist met the beads, the scent of sandalwood still present, faint, warm, lingering. It is my most prized possession. Wearing this, I also carry her and her memories.
4. Handmade Ceramic Censer
This piece thinks like a building. The long rectangular channel holds the incense at one end, while the slightly sloped base collects the ash as it falls, all things considered, nothing lost. It has the quiet logic of good architecture: a clear functional diagram made beautiful through restraint.
5. Physical Architecture Model
We still make them by hand, and in a practice increasingly mediated by screens, there is something irreplaceable about making a thing in space to understand a thing in space. Touching the ceiling, lowering your eye to the level of a room. The model does not simulate the building, it thinks alongside it, a way of processing what design and performance alone cannot resolve.
Works by STUDIO XIAO’s Xiao Lin:
Oyster Cove
A floor-to-ceiling plaster fireplace is the living room, its matte cloud gray surface receding as the fire catches the eye. A wooden-framed chaise longue and organic coffee tables fill the space with tactile warmth against the cool mineral backdrop.
Cove House
Renovated for clients drawn to mid-century sensibilities, this East Hampton residence is reclad in elongated brick and corrugated aluminum. The materials echo the space’s existing masonry walls while sharpening the geometry of the ceiling. Inside and out, a repeating slatted detail ties the facade, deck, bench seating and pergola into a single cohesive language. The sunken pool, surrounded by a waterfall, drops to meet the lower level, dissolving the boundary between the built volume and the landscape.
Flat house
Perched high on a hillside, this residence is conceived as a quiet, fortress-like form from the road that gradually opens up as you move inward. A compact front hedge and rock garden create a slow, purposeful path to the recess.
Gleason renovation
A TV room was redesigned as a place of tranquility. The back wall is anchored by a built-in sofa and bed with built-in lighting, a pull-out cord tucked neatly underneath. The cabinet folds into the window sill, unifying the wall as a single composite surface. Furniture chosen with calm intent turns the room into a haven.
Photo by Xiao Lin.
