For the third consecutive year, Assistant Professor Leyuan Li earned prestigious architectural education awards that underscore his innovation in teaching, design and community-engaged scholarship. These honors reflect both his pedagogical leadership and his creative impact on architectural education. The American Institute of Architecture Students and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture presented Li with the New Faculty Teaching Award for excellence in architectural instruction. The ACSA also honored him with the Faculty Design Award for his project Your Your Greenhouse Is Your Kitchen Is Your Living Room and the Creative Achievement Award for Where is Denver’s Chinatown?
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Li opened his design and research practice, Office for Roundtable, to investigate the cross-section between interior and urban realms to design spaces and events that facilitate sharing across diverse communities and creating collective narratives. In his research and teaching in the College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) at CU Denver, he applies a similar logic, teaching students to investigate overlooked concepts, elements, and conditions within domestic and public interiors.
The ACSA Architectural Education Awards recognize the exemplary work of educators who inspire students, contribute to the profession, and carry their research and creative work into professional practice and the community. Li’s three recognitions this year touch on each of those attributes, reflecting his commitment to the future of the built environment.
Excellence in Design
Your Greenhouse Is Your Kitchen Is Your Living Room received the ACSA Faculty Design Award, an honor that celebrates innovative architectural work that deepens critical engagement in practice and education while pushing the limits of design exploration. Li conceived the modular pavilion in collaboration with JXY Studio, a design office based in Guangzhou, China. Architectural designers Xinyu Li (Los Angeles, CA), Jiaxun Xu (Guangzhou) and Yue Xu (New York City, NY) joined the project team. Yuhan Chen and Ignis Zhang contributed curatorial expertise, and CU Denver Bachelor of Science in Architecture alumni Brandon Wunder and Efklides Tzimapitis supported the project as student assistants.
This installation neatly exemplifies Li’s research pursuits and design concepts. This project was also a finalist for the 2026 ArchDaily Building of the Year and was among the 2025 Dezeen Awards shortlists. Also in 2025, Li received the MacDowell Fellowship and the Art Omi Fellowship, where he was able to redevelop the prototype for this work and created a series of new drawings to explore projects and practices of communal farming.
“I’m more interested in what’s temporary, tactical, or ephemeral—something in many ways in contrast to the kind of conventional way of approaching architecture, which is to make a building,” said Li. ”I’m more or less interested in small scale, tactical installations or temporary work that create a larger urban impact.”
Your Greenhouse Is Your Kitchen Is Your Living Room is a pavilion-like structure that combines the functions of a greenhouse, an outdoor kitchen, and a living room into a single, adaptable space. Built of steel framing wrapped in translucent polycarbonate panels, the greenhouse can shift from an enclosed microclimate for growing vegetables to an open-air communal space for gatherings, workshops, or shared meals. The overall design encourages active participation and social interaction while responding to varying climate conditions through passive cooling and flexible spatial configurations.
Excellence in Creativity
In addition to his interest in modular and ephemeral designs, Li explores how design can address societal issues, particularly through communal experiences that break down barriers and challenge the status quo.
This year, Li was also awarded the ACSA Creative Achievement Award for Where Is Denver’s Chinatown? The award recognizes a specific creative achievement in teaching, design, scholarship, research or service that advances architectural education.
With Where Is Denver’s Chinatown?, Li sought to uncover the once-vibrant Chinese American community that a violent 1880 riot displaced and that a subsequent demolition in the 1940s erased.
Li’s fall 2023 undergraduate architecture studio studied “The Suppressed Interior,” and asked students to present their ideas for repurposing existing buildings from the former Chinatown neighborhood and propose spatial possibilities for a future Chinatown in Denver.
Until recently, preservation groups devoted limited attention to this section of Lower Downtown Denver and maintained minimal documentation. In an effort to restore the history and memory of Denver’s Chinatown, Li and the College of Architecture and Planning joined forces the History Colorado and the Colorado Asian Pacific United (CAPU) to research, record, and share the history of the community. Their work culminated in an exhibition titled, “Where is Denver’s Chinatown? Stories Remembered, Reclaimed, and Reimagined.” The exhibition featured drawings and models from Li’s undergraduate studio and remained on display at History Colorado from October 2024 through August 2025.
“The ACSA Creative Achievement Award fills me with a sense of gratification and further understanding of what I have learned from Leyuan Li after all these years,” said CAP alum Brandon Wunder. “It is a prestigious award that he greatly deserving of. It not only means a lot to him but means a lot to all of his students by reinforcing all the hard work and dedication of Li and his students.”
Excellence in Instruction
Following his undergraduate studio with Li, Wunder worked as Li’s student assistant, contributed curatorial discussions, and created representational and technical drawings for both the Your Kitchen Is Your Greenhouse Is Your Living Room project and the Where Is Denver’s Chinatown? exhibition.
“One of the biggest factors as to why I was his student is because I decided to challenge myself with a studio prompt that I was unfamiliar with [The Suppressed Interior]. I would advise everyone to always challenge themselves because you never know how something may turn out,” said Wunder. “Leyuan Li is incredibly deserving of this award,” added Wunder, “and I can’t think of another teacher that I have had who is more deserving of this award.
Trevor Motzko was also in Li’s Suppressed Interior studio and went on to work with Li on additional projects.
“I would consider Li to be one of my greatest mentors, having gone from being a student in his class, to [being a teaching assistant] for his class, to now teaching alongside him,” said Motzko, an alum and fellow studio faculty at CU Denver. “He both inspired me and helped pave the way for my entrance into academia. I am forever grateful for everything Li has taught me.”
“The things that I have learned from working with Li will continue to shape the ways I teach and design,” continued Motzko. “Li opened my eyes to the role that architecture holds in the world and the agency that we have as architects and designer to inspire and create change. In addition, in every class that Li teaches, he helps students understand the impact that they can have. All of these principles are things that I now implement into my own teaching practices.”
“My teaching is highly informed by my research, and I bring my research to the classroom,” said Li. “If we cannot leverage the power of research and creative work to empower humanity, then architecture will continue to be marginalized. One way to do that is to think about how we could serve communities and build cities through our research and creative work.”
Li will be presented with the AIAS/ACSA New Faculty Teaching Award, Creative Achievement Award, and Faculty Design Award at the ACSA 114th Annual Meeting, March 26-28, 2026.