Environmental Design · Spatial Narrative · Therapeutic Design
I respond to life with lightness — using colour, structure and space to help emotions find balance. From healing furniture to retail installations, from spatial narrative to rural regeneration, design is my medium for connecting people with the world.
I am Zihui Zhao, an undergraduate in Environmental Design at the Hebei University – University of Central Lancashire College of Media & Creative Arts. I use a light yet restrained design language to touch the tension between psyche, order and nature.
One thread runs through my portfolio — balance: the balance between adult and child, between rational order and emotional ease, between people and environment. I believe space is not only meant to be seen, but to be felt and healed.
Four projects spanning furniture, retail, installation and the rural. Click a card to jump to its details.
A soft flexible-structure seat for the "two-way balanced, flowing symbiosis" of adult and child — a therapeutic furniture design for contemporary college students.
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Telling a story through space, objects and media — a "prism of life's forks" installation that reconciles adult pressure with childhood longing.
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An interactive retail installation inspired by Marimekko's poppy flower, built from seven equilateral hexagons, with the children's sub-brand "hide and seek".
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Regenerating a hollow village in Ningbo: following Xie Lingyun's route as narrative, an "auspicious-cloud canopy" links six functional zones to balance ecology and growth.
View projectA flexible soft-structure seat based on the "balanced and flowing coexistence between adults and children" — a therapeutic furniture design focused on the psychological state of contemporary college students. It breaks the binary opposition between maturity and innocence, using structure to interpret self-balance and emotional coexistence: 30 flexible sponges + an elastic-band mesh (symbolising the child's flow and ease) wrapped around 6 fixed bases (symbolising the adult's order and stability).
Taking the most iconic poppy flower (Unikko) of the Finnish brand Marimekko, I deconstructed its petals into an interactive retail installation of seven equilateral hexagons. Inside each hexagon is a mirror maze of prismatic bodies, paired with safe visible red light and a laser-sensing unlock mechanism — stand in the right position, trigger the reflected light, and the product compartment opens, turning "discovery" into a physical ritual. It extends into the children's sub-brand hide and seek (Fantasy Forest Island): kaleidoscope, puzzle blocks and baby comfort dolls.
This project focuses on telling a narrative through space, objects and media, set in the C5 building atrium. Following a girl's dream: a glass wall (interpersonal alienation) → a floating staircase (burden) → a miniature dollhouse (longing for childhood) → a geometric vortex (meeting the childhood self) → cage / path to school (dual perspectives) → the rainbow passage (reconciliation). At its heart is a deconstructed prism: dichroic glass and a stainless-steel frame, spiralling upward, wide base and narrowing top — white light (an unknown life) refracts into a colour spectrum, a metaphor for "every choice at life's fork".
A hollow-village regeneration for Xiejieshan Village, Dayan Town, Fenghua District, Ningbo, Zhejiang. Adopting a low-intervention strategy, it renovates abandoned dwellings while preserving original structures and landscapes, integrated with green energy and seasonal-adaptive design. Following the travel route of the landscape-poetry ancestor Xie Lingyun as narrative, it extracts the Taoist "Unity of Heaven and Humanity / Grotto-Heaven" and the auspicious cloud as core concepts — a single "auspicious-cloud canopy" spanning the site serves both as weather shelter and spiritual bond connecting six functional zones, from immersion back to nature.
From spatial modelling to construction drawings and visual expression — landing every idea with engineering-level precision.
If you are interested in my work, or would like to talk about environmental design, spatial narrative and therapeutic products, feel free to reach out.