Soft Build Architects (SoBA)

SoBA, Soft Build Architects, is an independent practice founded in 2018, working between Suzhou and the San Francisco Bay Area. It started with international competitions and grew through public projects in China, treating architecture as a dialogue between cultural memory, contemporary urban life and everyday experience.

The two founding partners, Ruo Wang and Haiyin Tang, both hold a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. Wang, a member of the American Institute of Architects, worked at BIG and Richard Meier & Partners before co-founding the studio; Tang is LEED accredited and came from HOK, where she worked on large commercial and institutional projects. The name sets out the method: soft as adaptive thinking, build as shaping relationships between people, space and environment.