VZ: What is your and your team's thought process when designing buildings that have a high impact on people?

Team LLLab (Luis and Liu): The team’s thought process is mostly treating people as the driven design force, especially when the team is mostly working on community and society-based considerations, the design process usually starts from analysis and research on the human aspects. However, not only from the past, but significant amount of understanding is also having the prospect as important design foundation. 

A wide range of approaches will be appropriate, as all design projects are different, while confronting different cultural and societal backgrounds, but one key element in all, could be the incentive to stay flexible during the thought process for the not-possible-to-be-summarized prospective conditions that requires perception of both the past and the future to be observed. 

VZ: Can you give us a little insight into what’s it like to work with you (The firm's culture, design approach, and out-of-the-box ideas for designing projects).

Team LLLab (Luis and Liu): We have very interactive team structure in our studio and all team members are encouraged to speak up to express design ideas, even experience levels are different, we believe that this process and mindset can inspire and motivate the most, to eventually find its common ground of the well calibrated balance of the design solution.

We approach design with experimental considerations and attitudes, not specifically about the materialistic experiments, but consider design context more as variables that is interactive with ideas. 

VZ: What kind of submissions are you looking forward to seeing from the participants? Are there any areas where one should pay attention while designing a Tiny Library?

Team LLLab (Luis and Liu): We are very looking forward, as it is not only a challenge to understand what a general library needs to be, but that how library with such uncommon scale can achieve its common publicity becomes a very sensitive topic for the debate. 

While designing a Tiny Library, candidates may need to pay attention to, throughout the entire design process, knowing what the library means and what it needs to achieve instead of trying to do everything one general/conventional library covers. 

Who is the user, where it is and how it interacts with its social behavior, seem to be more important subjects for designing a library, before judging if one design solution is appropriate or not. 

VZ: And finally, what would be your word of advice for all the young budding students and architects who are looking to make a mark in this professional world?

Team LLLab (Luis and Liu): Always great to stay ambitious and passionate, which will help young architects so much to go through all the tough moments on the career path, however, while looking to make a mark in this professional world is very exciting, before doing it, try to be a qualified and responsible architect first, and stay persistent.