AnAn Shen

Architecture and Mathematics major

I am a student of architecture and mathematics at Wellesley College, with a deep interest in the intersection of design, nature, socio-political history, and rationality. My academic work at Wellesley and MIT explores how architecture can balance emotional sensibility and analytical thinking through form and materiality. Through research and design, I have developed skills in writing, speaking, and visual storytelling to communicate my passion for architecture’s role in building communities—emphasizing spatial narratives, preserving cultural identity, and addressing social equity.

Echoes from the Ancestral Table: A Poem to Faded Memories and Family Traditions

intaglio and relief prints, model (plywood, acrylic, rice paper), watercolor, digital drawings

Jewett Hallway Galleries

From the center of my family house unfolds a story of kinship, anchored by the ancestral worship table at its core. Within the aged walls of our home in Gaoqiao Village on China’s east coast, time is layered into the architecture itself. It is the rituals of honoring gods and ancestors that resonate most deeply with me—practices imbued with reverence, appreciation and fantasy. Over the past century and a half, my family has lived on and cared for this land, passing down traditions and values through each generation. If memory could take physical form, it might appear as flashback images, hairline cracks in bricks, my mother’s diary, my grandmother’s stories, my father’s monochrome photographs, or my grandfather’s measuring tapes. This project aims to reconstruct our old family house, now in a state of disrepair, through a range of visual forms and techniques. It is both a preservation of place and an exploration of how architecture holds memory, lineage, and belonging.

to see more from AnAn:  linkedin.com/in/AnAnShen

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