Statement

Grace Chee is a 3D designer and creative technologist working at the intersection of architecture, storytelling and emerging technology. Her practice is concerned with responsive, immersive spatial environments: spaces that can sense people inside them and answer back.

Trained as an architect, she became preoccupied with a question first posed in the 1960s by MIT's Architecture Machine Group and the cyberneticians around it: what happens when a building, or a machine, stops executing commands and begins to hold a conversation? Her work carries that lineage into the present, now that real-time sensing and AI finally make the dialogue possible. Across installations, live environments and digital worlds, she treats the body as an input and the environment as a collaborator, using pose tracking, sensors, projection, augmented reality and real-time graphics to build experiences where people and systems shape one another.

For four years she led creative and creative technology in experiences for Nike, Visa, Sephora, Chase, Converse and OpenAI, earning numerous industry awards, including Shorty Awards and the Drum awards, for her projects along the way. She is now turning that language toward an independent practice and her own agency, Glom Labs, where she explores spatial environments that ask what human creativity and agency mean when the machine becomes a partner.

Based in Hong Kong / San Francisco. Working internationally.

Experience

  • Independent Practice 3D Designer & Creative Technologist
    2025 – present
  • Senior Creative Technologist On Board Experiential
    2021 – 2025
  • Journalist/ Editor/ Critic Time Out HK · HK Tatler · Lifestyle Asia
    2013 – 2017

Education

  • Master of Architecture I Harvard Graduate School of Design
    2017 – 2021
  • BBA, Marketing The Chinese University of Hong Kong
    2011 – 2015

Selected clients

Nike · Visa · Sephora · Chase · Converse · OpenAI · Zelle · Red Canary · LG Nova · NBA 2K League · Rise · Intuit · The Infatuation

Awards & recognition

  • Gold — Best Virtual Event Shorty Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual
  • Gold — Best Use of Technology The Drum Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual
  • Best Event Technology (×2) · Best Virtual/Hybrid Event · Best Use of Technology BizBash Event Experience Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual
  • Silver — Best Virtual Event Ex Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual
  • Finalist — Best Virtual Event Shorty Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual
  • Best Use of Technology · Best Virtual Event Digiday Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual
  • Bronze — Best Use of Technology in Experience Design Event Marketer Experience Design Awards, 2024 SEPHORiA Virtual

Grants & fellowships

  • Seed Grant Hong Kong Design Trust, 2024
  • Ike Kligerman Barkley Traveling Fellowship Harvard GSD, 2020
  • Peter B. Saltonstall Grant Harvard GSD, 2020
  • Harvard Asia Center Grant Harvard University, 2019
  • Prof. Bill Breger Fund Harvard GSD, 2017 – 2021
  • Dean's Merit Scholarship Harvard GSD, 2017 – 2018

Conferences & publications

  • "SHERPA: Tangible Privacy and Empathetic Interactions in the Smart Home" ACADIA 2024, Calgary & Banff
  • "Doze: hydrogel-based epidermal platform for personalized scent diffusion" ACM UbiComp / ISWC, 2020

Speaking

  • Main Stage Speaker SF Design Week, 2024
  • Panelist Seattle Design Festival, 2024

Press

  • BizBash · Event Marketer · Bustle · Hypebae · WWD 2023
  • Boston Globe · Forbes · ArchDaily · Harvard Gazette · Dezeen 2020

Contact

For collaborations, commissions and exhibitions.