Mike Tonkin & Anna Liu

Anna Liu is an Architect and teacher, with experience in architecture, art, and landscape, encompassing work in the UK, China, Japan, the US where she grea up, and Taiwan where she was born. She co-founded Tonkin Liu with Mike Tonkin in 2002, after working for Rocco Design and Arup Associates in Hong Kong and London, on the Hong Kong Central Station and Manchester Stadium. Together they taught at the Architecture Association School of Architecture for four years, exploring studies of patterns in nature in and in hauman nature, an area they further explored years later with students at the University of Westminster and at universities in Japan and Taiwan. Anna searches in each project for a simple enduring story embodying universal emblems derived from nature. 

Mike Tonkin is an Architect, Landscape Architect, and teacher. He established his practice in 1989 and co-founded Tonkin Liu with Anna Liu in 2002. The practice of Tonkin Liu is informed by a nature-focused design process and an ambition to reconnect people to nature. Lessons from nature and first-hand knowledge of vernacular architecture have been informed by extensive international travel. Over the last twenty years, Mike has taught and lectured at the AA, the Bartlett School of Architecture, the University of Cambridge, the University of Bath, the RCA and the University of Westminster. His completed PhD, The Nature of Place, undertaken at the University of Bath, demonstrates how a nature-focused storytelling approach can bring innovation to architecture.