Eric Schuldenfrei, Founding Partner of ESKYIU, is a designer who focuses on the evolving relationship between architecture, animation, technology and art. His past projects include an art installation commissioned by Agnes Gund, President Emerita of MoMA; multi-media projects for Salvatore Ferragamo ‘Walk of Style’; and computer animations for Diller + Scofidio and The Builders Association’s Obie Award winning multi-media theatre work ‘Jet Lag’. Other work includes animated sequences for the PBS American Masters ‘Henry Luce and the Making of the American Century’ and public projects for Lincoln Center together with Diller Scofidio + Renfro. 

ESKYIU architectural projects completed with his partner Marisa Yiu have been featured in many international biennales: ‘Urban Pastoral’, an architectural installation created for the 2008 Venice Biennale;  ‘Human Motor: Narratives from the Assembly Line’ in Ljubljana; ‘Mediated Labour’ for the 2007 Hong Kong- Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale and ‘Aqua Industry’ for the 2011-12 edition. A video installation ‘The Measure of All Things’, in collaboration with artist Haluk Akakce, was exhibited at Casino Luxembourg; Kunst Werke, Berlin; The Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt; and the Centre d’art Contemporain, Geneva. 

Schuldenfrei received a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, and completed his PhD from Cambridge in ‘Architecture and the Moving Image’. He taught at Princeton University for six years; Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts; and at the Architectural Association, where the work has been published in MIT Thresholds. 

His design projects have been featured in Wallpaper*, Surface Magazine and TIMEOUT’s Designers You Need To Know. Schuldenfrei served as the Curator for Exhibition, Education, Film, and Media for the 2009 HK SZ Bi-City Biennale of Architecture\ Urbanism at the West Kowloon site. Recently he presented and lectured at the Cumulus Helsinki Conference as a Keynote speaker; DLD Moscow on the topic of Future Cities; the Harvard University AsiaGSD lecture series; University of Michigan; Cranbrook Academy of Art; the University of Cambridge; and at the V&A Museum in London. 

Marisa Yiu, Founding Partner of ESKYIU, is an architect who integrates multi-disciplinary design, culture and spatial agency. She has been examining issues relating to the cultural landscape of Hong Kong since 2000. Her essay ‘Image Construction: Hong Kong since 1967-8’ published in LOG Journal examined Hong Kong’s relationship to the Pearl River Delta and global networks. 

Yiu served as the Chief Curator of the 2009 HK SZ Bi-City Biennale of Architecture\ Urbanism, curating over eighty exhibitions and spearheading inventive events located at the West Kowloon Cultural District waterfront. Her past works include community driven projects such as ‘Brandspider’ for Whitney Museum ISP exhibition; ‘Place Markers’ with placeMatters, New York; and Chinatown Design Lab. 

Prior to establishing ESKYIU, Marisa worked on internationally renowned buildings and urban developments at Kohn Pederson Fox Associates PC (NY), Marble.Fairbanks Architects (NY), and taught in Spain with Ben Van Berkel and Caroline Bos of UNStudio. Yiu received her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia College, Columbia University (New York) and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University. She recently lectured at Princeton University on ‘Alternative practices’; the China NEXT symposium organized by Architectural Record, UNESCO forum on ‘Historic Urban Landscapes’ in Vietnam, and the AsiaGSD ‘Specific Weights of Architecture: Asian Probes’ conference at Harvard University. She has published in A/D, Log journal, DomusChina, MIT’s thresholds, Architectural Record, Metropolis and Journal for Architectural Education. 

Marisa has taught at the Architectural Association in London; Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Parsons School of Design; led workshops at the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum with the Center for Urban Pedagogy; was Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong (2007-2010). At the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong she organized and convened ‘SPAIN-HONG KONG: Building Culture symposium’, and the recent International conference on ‘The Evolving Architectural Education: Innovation in teaching and learning’ in the context of Asia.