ava xia research + design



PROFILE



Ava Xia is an  Manchu-Han Chinese  environmental researcher and designer based in London, the founder of LORE, an developing initiative centred on lore as living ecological knowledge. Her practice investigates cultural memory, ecological relationships, and environmental justice through analogue, embodied, sonic, and performative forms of counter-cartography, collective imagination, and landscape-based interventions under climate crisis. 

Her previous projects explore and challenge the notion of the moving, the bordering, and the fielding across nomadic and planetary landscape. These investigations span social, territorial, technological, sonic, and ecological architectures, tracing the circulatory relationships between human and non-human collectives.

She engages in professional works at Lo—TEK Office for Intercultural Urbanism, INTERPRT Studio, and GIT| Territorial Investigation Group where her practice continues to engage with alternative ways of understanding and representing landscapes, across Traditional Ecological Knowledge system and Forensics studies.



CONTACT

avaxia.25@gmail.com
Instagram


EXHIBITION

Milano Design Week 2026 - The Static Between Us



By Anastrophes Collective
(Ava Xia, Aya El Khouri, Isabel Palacios-Macedo Aguilar,Tima Rabbat)

















Practices



Avian Mobility Workshop
Aug 2026

Facilitator:Ava Xia


A sonic mapping workshop exploring the birdsong of Hackney

In this sonic walking and mapping workshop, we'll explore birdsong by reimagining and spatialising invisible yet audible forms of urban life. Through hands-on and embodied listening practices, participants will investigate how landscapes become legible through sound, and how birds and environments continuously co-produce one another through movement, transmission, and ecological relations.




Lore-log Workshop Series
Aug 2026

Facilitator:Ava Xia

The Lore-log workshop continues the exhibition Lore-log: Chalky Matters through a participatory workshop format. It operates through a duo-mode structure, consisting of a mock-up lore-centred methodology: a critical Lore-Making session and a live Lore-Dressing performance. Through collective reimagination, participatory listening, and mapping of folkloric landscapes, the workshop reinterprets the project’s themes and explores new relationships between memory, place, and ecological imagination. 

Anastrophes Podcast Series

since 2025

Team:
Ava Xia
Aya El Khouri
Christie Swallow
Marie Lehman

If a catastrophe is things falling apart, then each episode of Anastrophe is a convergence — a moment of coming together. Through these walking conversations, we collect stories of key moments of changes in their practice, each one a marker of where our guests have been and where they’re heading next.






Lo—TEK Office Social Campaign Series

2026

Directors: Julia Watson + Charlene Smith
Researcher + Designer: Ava Xia + Liuyun Wang







Last Updated 24.10.31
Research-design Projects



 
0. Public Spatical Practice
 Lore-log: Chalky Matters
Exhibition + Workshop, 2026
Installation, films, 6m tracing paper drawings

Ava Xia

Pilot workshop participants: Ava Xia + Ru Li (gueat artisit) + Andy Brice (local artist)


Giant Bevis watches the River Arun and its moon-drawn floodplains. The Devil carved the dyke; chalk figures endure upon the Downs. The Knucker lurks beneath Lyminster’s spring. Watercress Queen singing along old mill streams. Winterbourns name settlements. From holy wells, pilgrim pools, to Woe Water, chalk water tells human stories. Under urgent climatic pressure, this workshop-based project advocates for a folkloric response to a collective post-catastrophic future.

Present as a part of SOS2026 Show at ANNEX of the Koppel Project.



1. Research Project

 Radioactivity, Radio Waves, and Resistance.

 Exhibition, 2025
Prints + Sound Installation
Ava Xia

In the central Sahara, amid the climate crisis,
countless border regimes, and multi-scalar
radioactive legacies, Tuareg communities face
exile, dispersion, and sedentarization. This is a
state-driven dysfunction—not bodily failure—that
enforces structural immobilization.

Tutors: Kamil Dalkir + Veronika Varga + Maïa Tellit Hawad



2. Design Thesis
 Porous Edges: Redefined Moss Park

Exhibition, 2024
Prints + Models

The project is situated within downtown Toronto, specifically in the Moss Park neighbourhood, where is
struggling with safety concerns, reflecting from high crime rate and protective measures everywhere, and encountering huge population dynamics and wealth disparities due to gentrification. Amidst this transformation, Moss Park stands as a pivotal public space, uniquely positioned at the intersection of these dynamic socio-economic forces. 



3. Public Art/Installation
 ‘LABLE’

2023
Prints + Models
Digital Work

Behind the scenes of the Fast Fashion industry lies the intricate interplay of Feminism, Environmentalism, and Capitalism oppressions. The series design of pocket parks, showcased during Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Canada— a celebration in a city of diversity, to broadly convey those messages through building up platform by architecture.




4. Urban Planning

Neons On- Blue& Green Belt
2024
Location: Las Vegas Wash, Las Vegas, US
Digital Work

This project challenges that divide by proposing an adaptive, community-centered approach to urban resilience and environmental justice.




5. Spatial Design
The End Times


2022
Location: Ashrafi Esfahani Park, District 2,Tehran, Iran
Digital Work




6. Media Study
 Branching Within the Boundaries
Exhibition,2025
4.1 x 5.8 inches x 21pages concertina
RCA,London,UK




7. Sustainability Design
 CARDINALFISH Island


2021
Location: Tinakin Laut + Banggai Town, Banggai Island, Indonesia
Digital work


8. Modelsview


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