Annan Zuo

Exploring the Relationships between Animal Geography and More-than-human Architecture

Annan Zuo is a researcher and designer working at the intersection of animal geography, more-than-human architecture, multispecies care, and urban biodiversity.

His work explores how architectural design can engage with and mediate more-than-human lifeworlds to support multispecies coexistence in our built environments.

He holds an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design from the University of Cambridge (RIBA Part 2) and a BA/BEng (Hons) in Architecture from the University of Liverpool/XJTLU (RIBA Part 1). He has also received the Professional Practice in Architecture qualification from the Architectural Association (RIBA Part 3).

Research

Throughout his research positions at UNESCO WHITRAP Suzhou, KU Leuven, and the University of Texas at Austin, Annan has worked on interdisciplinary projects on architecture and urbanism, heritage conservation, landscape recovery, and sustainable design.

As an active member of the American Society for Cybernetics, he has presented his research on systemic design and second-order cybernetics at ASC conferences and speaker series, as well as the Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD) Symposia. He is Track Lead for Pluriversal More-than-human Design at the ASC Conference 2026.

As a bio-art researcher, he has presented work on interspecies communication and biosemiotic enactivism at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and the Taboo - Transgression - Transcendence Conference on Art and Science (TTT).

Design

Working across architecture, bio-art, installation design, and stage design, Annan's projects have been featured at international platforms including Ars Electronica, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Media Architecture Biennale, and Shanghai Taikoo Li.

He was awarded the 2024 BioDesign Challenge Grand Prize and was the nominee for both the RIBA Bronze Medal (2020) and RIBA Silver Medal (2023).

Practice

As an architectural designer, Annan has worked at Foster + Partners in London and OLI Architecture in Shanghai. His professional experience includes the development and coordination of transportation infrastructure projects in New York and Warsaw, as well as cultural and civic projects in Shanghai.

Annan’s current research investigates how animal geography can inform more-than-human design, and how, in turn, more-than-human architectural design practices can contribute to the theoretical and methodological development of animal geography. It focuses on more-than-human architectural projects designed to support human-animal cohabitation and urban biodiversity in England through community-based forms of participation, care, and long-term maintenance. 

Through more-than-human participatory research methods and multispecies ethnography, this research examines how concepts and approaches from animal geography can inform the ways more-than-human lifeworlds are accessed, interpreted, and translated into architectural practice. It explores how assemblages of architectural agents (architects, community groups, and urban animals) participate in the design, care, maintenance, and constant reshaping of the spaces for multispecies coexistence. The research also investigates the forms of multispecies lived space that emerge through more-than-human architectural practices and their implications for enabling or constraining urban biodiversity.

• Zuo, A. (forthcoming) Constructing Enactive Biosemiotic Domains through Enkinaesthesia. Constructivist Foundations.
• Zuo, A. and Lapinskas, A. (forthcoming) Coral Dialogues: An Enactive Biosemiotic Approach to Interspecies Communication. Technoetic Arts.
• Zuo, A. (2025) Design with Care: An Empathetic Response Towards Wicked Problems - A Case Study of the Satoyama Landscape in Kyoto. In, Han, J., Lombardi, D. and Cece, A. (eds.) Advances in the Integration of Technology and the Built Environment. Singapore: Springer Nature.
• Zuo, A., Steier, F. and Westermann, C. (2025) Between care and control: how to weave good intentions into complex systems? Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD14). Early access. 
• Sipos, R., Zuo, A., Maciel, N.D. and Mou, P. (2025) Welcome to Planet B: co-designing transdisciplinary research questions to uncover super wicked problems. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, pp. 1–25.
• Koehne, A., Zuo, A. and Li, J. (2025) Consume Our Consumption. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronic/Emerging Art 2025, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 23–29 May, pp. 374–381.