In The Indulgent Center: Reimagining San Francisco, architect Qiyuan Liang translates globalization, capital flows, media transformation, and trade into a mixed-use setting tied to existing structures. The 2026 project won Silver at both the London Design Awards and the TITAN Property Awards.
-- Qiyuan Liang's The Indulgent Center – Reimagining San Francisco examines how architecture can turn economic and cultural forces into spatial experience. The 2026 project uses market conventions as a generative framework, translating globalization, capital flows, media transformation, trade, and everyday urban rhythms into a mixed-use setting that connects existing structures with new civic and commercial programs.
The project is framed around a condition often hidden behind conventional architectural briefs: cities are shaped by systems people use every day but rarely see directly. Rather than treating those systems as background context, The Indulgent Center brings them into the building's spatial language, making movement, exchange, leisure, protest, reading, sport, and tourism part of the same visible urban field.
The design operates across both conceptual and functional dimensions. It addresses globalization, capital, media, and trade while functioning as a mixed-use environment organized around cultural exchange, relaxation, civic expression, and long-term adaptation. New interventions are tied to existing structures and to the surrounding urban context rather than imposed on a cleared site.
The project has also received recognition from international design awards. The London Design Awards named The Indulgent Center - Reimagining San Francisco a 2026 Silver winner in the Architectural Design - Mixed Use Architectural Designs category, with Liang as entrant. The TITAN Property Awards recognized the same project at Silver in Architecture – Mixed Use Architectural Designs the same year.
In a June 17, 2026 interview with Muse.World, Liang described the work as an effort to make normally invisible forces, including capital flows, globalization, and media transformation, physically legible, and characterized the project as operating across urban speculation, social commentary, and functional architecture.
The interview also set out his working method. Liang begins from research into forces outside the building, including market mechanics, globalization, and capital movement, then translates that research through models, diagrams, immersive renderings, and decisions about structure, systems, and envelope. The sequence explains why the project reads not merely as an image of urban change but as an architectural proposal carried through design development.
Its strength is specificity. Rather than relying on broad claims about mixed-use development, the project ties its concept to identifiable programmatic activities and spatial relationships: leisure, cultural exchange, tourism, reading, sport, relaxation, protest, connections to existing structure, and adaptable public interfaces. Those details allow the work to be assessed both as a design proposal and as a structured response to changing urban conditions, particularly where older urban sites must absorb new patterns of use.
That focus on adaptable, context-connected architecture runs through Liang's wider practice. A licensed architect in the State of California, he practices at Hammel, Green and Abrahamson Inc. (HGA) in San Jose, where he works on large-scale corporate and commercial projects, planning and permit documentation, technical coordination, and client presentations. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, with a minor in Sustainable Environments, and his work spans sustainable and low-energy design, mixed-use and commercial architecture, adaptive reuse, and urban design.
Taken together, The Indulgent Center – Reimagining San Francisco presents Liang's design work as a disciplined inquiry into how buildings can register the forces shaping contemporary cities. Its award record and project documentation reflect an approach in which mixed-use architecture can operate as civic space, cultural infrastructure, and urban commentary while remaining connected to existing structures and future patterns of use.
Contact Info:
Name: Qiyuan Liang
Email: Send Email
Organization: Qiyuan Liang
Website: https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=sB46_z8AAAAJ&hl=en
Release ID: 89205628
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