Sitong is a researcher and a landscape architect driven by her interest on urban interstices – the in-between urban open spaces where one can easily reach in his daily life and encounter the beauty of a natural biotope.
Sitong’s current research is focusing on nurturing a network of nature-inclusive interstitial green spaces in the inner city of Amsterdam, transformed from existing underused and misfunctioning urban spaces. These small, in-between green spaces can effectively complement the existing green infrastructure in the inner-city area, responding to urban challenges including extreme heat, biodiversity loss and the needs of neighborhood public spaces. The research starts with the linear passage of Keizersgracht, as a potential linkage connecting to the larger green spaces in the urban periphery. Questions Sitong focuses on are for example: where are potential locations for these green interstices? How can design provide initial conditions for the natural process to develop? What kind of role citizens can play in this process? And what are specific values the green interstice can provide for Amsterdam?
Apart from her research, Sitong also participates in the development flagship project "Multifunctional Quay Walls" and joins the development of green environment for Marineterrein.
Sitong Luo is trained as a landscape architect. She obtained her bachelor's degree in landscape architecture at Beijing Forestry University in 2013. After graduating, she came to the Delft University of Technology where she did her master's studies in landscape architecture from the year 2013 to 2015. In 2016, she started her Ph.D. at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft. Her research addresses the paradox of designing urban leftover spaces – between the definition projected by the design and the indeterminacy in the interstitial condition of leftover spaces. In 2020, Sitong Luo conducted the NWO KIEM research project Open-up Interstices in Den Haag Zuidwest. Currently, Sitong is finalizing her Ph.D. thesis Disclosing Interstices: Open-ended Design Transformation of Urban Leftover spaces.
“Sometimes it is cleverer to observe and reflect upon a problem than to solve it, and perhaps that is why we need urban interstices”
Sitong Luo
Research Fellow
