Elaine bridges the worlds of architecture, urbanism, and development, driven by a passion for reshaping urban landscapes. Her approach focuses on human-scale development, strategically aligning policy reform, socio-economic intricacies, and environmental systems to cultivate cities that embrace ever-evolving equitable and sustainable transformation.

Los Angeles
Hong Kong

Contact

For general inquires or collaborations, please email elaine@desakota.com.

Elaine is Senior Manager of Design & Strategy at Samara. She also directs her own boutique development firm dedicated to intentional urban development in Southern California.

While working at Toyo Ito & Associates in Tokyo, Elaine contributed to high-profile commissions such as the Nanyang Technological University Business School in Singapore and the First Prize-winning proposal for the Hermitage Museum in Barcelona. Between 2012-2015, Elaine worked as Project Architect at Clou Architects in Beijing, leading the design and management of multiple mixed-use developments for clients such as Vanke, CapitaLand, and Wanda.

Research and teaching continue to be an integral part of Elaine's practice. Her research on lowrise high density housing has received recognition from the L.A. Mayor’s Office and UCLA CityLab. While teaching at Cal Poly Pomona Architecture, she led the Fall 2021 studio "Collective Frameworks", where student works served as a resource for Chinatown community groups advocating for more affordable housing. The Hong Kong Design Trust awarded Elaine the 2020 Feature Grant to study the relationship between kinship and common property in rapidly changing urban ecosystems. In the spring of 2020, she led the joint urban design and landscape studio “Taishan: Designing the Rural Cosmopolis in China” at Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2019, Elaine was awarded the SCUT Foreign Lecturer Grant to direct the research and curate the exhibition “Incremental Urbanism: Evolving Collective Forms in Taishan, China” at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism and Seoul Hall of Architecture & Urbanism Exhibition. Elaine’s 2017 Master’s Thesis, “Village Autonomy”, was funded by Harvard Asia Center and exhibited at the 2018 BiCity Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture.

Elaine holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California.