SFWF | Participants

Kyu Che

Kyu Che is an interdisciplinary environment designer involved with architecture, design, and the visual arts. Following his education in Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, he gained professional expertise working with leading architecture firms in the San Francisco Bay Area. Disillusioned by the disharmony of contemporary building practice, he launched Symbionic Design Studio in 1997 to pursue an independent private practice parallel to exploring alternative artistic and environmental visions of architecture.

Drawing from his professional architectural experience and expertise, Kyu specializes in art space projects collaborating with artists and art venues to realize thought provoking experimental spaces. Some of his personal conceptual projects address alternative high tech habitat systems in an imagined "parallel universe"- pre-industrial / post-apocalyptic natural landscapes utilizing current technologies. His works have been exhibited in galleries and public institutions including New Langton Arts, Yale Art and Architecture Gallery, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Alongside his career as an architectural designer, Kyu is an enthusiastic supporter of non profit organizations involved in art and environmental sustainability. He serves as a member of the board of directors for New Langton Arts and volunteers for environmental and cultural preservation institutions such as the Earthwatch Institute ranging from work in the Mongolian steppes to acting as the architectural director excavating ancient Nuraghe in Sardegna.

As a young boy, Kyu Che landed in Santa Monica, California having crossed the Pacific Ocean from his ancestral home in Korea. He grew up skateboarding and surfing along the California coast, combining his cross cultural heritage with an open minded and sunny west coast lifestyle. He currently lives and works on the west coast dividing his time between San Francisco, Bolinas and Seattle.