Jiayue (Muji) Mu

Architecture (MA)

After the stage collapes: A School of Changing Faces — Located on the site of a former community theater in Beijing—demolished due to policy shifts and structural decay—this project does not treat the ruins as a symbol of loss, but rather as the cornerstone for a new kind of school: a space for learning, communication, and growth. Here, the building is not merely constructed, but carefully composed—like a face in transformation, layered through foundation, contour, eye makeup, lip makeup, and setting. Each spatial element corresponds to a moment in the ritual of makeup: from archival fragments reassembled into walls, to vertical towers that speak like lips. All materials are salvaged from the original structure and reorganized through an aesthetic, cosmetic logic. The result is not a spectacle, but a soft, expressive architecture—both intimate and exposed. Between performance and rest, between face and façade, this house becomes a space where urban youth can transform, be seen, and come to rest. After the stage collapses, a new face begins.

Makeup box：Gaze and Counter-Gaze — A transitional device: a spatial experiment that transforms makeup gestures into architectural logic.（360mm*430mm*300mm ; Made by gypsum, mirror, photosensitive resin）

Around the fire pond: Redefing feminist collective space — With the theme of co-cooking, the project explores how the Mosuo people build spaces with women as the main body of the family, providing a short-term shelter for them to communicate and co-operate with each other. In rural China, due to the traditional model of the " family" as the unit of production, most women who choose to be single lake of the space to survive. The new narrative takes into consideration and aims to reintegrate the hidden and marginalised vulnerable groups in the rural society into social activities. This means bringing together tourists and local women and integrating them into a new type of matriarchal family using the fire pond as a medium. Can we imagine a temporary organization where women can gain their rights in groups? While we have delegated the power to give us political rights to insitutions, how can women work and build together to gain new equal status?

The physical model axo — （850mm*900mm*210mm ; Made by Coconut shell, MDF board, wood, acrylic, plaster, stone, recycled newspaper）

About

Muji is an internationally experienced designer with footprints in Asia and the UK. She has worked at Woods Bagot and AECOM, where she participated in the design of luxury resorts in Dubai, commercial and other projects. She also studied for a bachelor’s degree in architecture in China.

Muji’s work combines research, narrative and spatial strategies to explore how architecture responds to social, cultural and environmental systems. She has a strong sense of social responsibility, especially focusing on young women and minorities and striving for the voice of vulnerable groups in space.

In her first project at the RCA, she explored a female co-living community inspired by the living patterns, culture and architecture of the Mosuo people, the last matriarchal clan in China, and drew on their “grandmother’s house” culture to provide a new co-living structure for left-behind rural women and single women in the city. Create a new architectural system, challenge the spatial patterns and lifestyles of patriarchal society, and advocate more equal living patterns, maintenance and care forms.

Her latest project, After the stage collapes: A School of Changing Faces, uses the design language of “makeup” to reorganize the architectural space, transform the function and form of the original building, and give it new life through the abandoned Hongxia Theater site. This project not only shows respect for history, but also explores how space can maintain its emotional core in the midst of change.

In her future career, she is committed to promoting a more inclusive, supportive and meaningful social environment through architectural design.

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