Info — Shuming Zhou

S.Z

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Shuming Zhou
Realtime Environment &
World-Building Designer

Shuming Zhou is a London-based realtime environment and world-building designer with a background spanning architecture, cinematic space, and immersive storytelling. Her practice explores how spatial design, atmosphere, and narrative can shape emotional experience across film, animation, and digital environments. Working across Unreal Engine, 3D world-building, and visual development, she creates authored worlds that blur the boundaries between memory, fiction, and lived space. Her projects are driven by a strong interest in spatial emotion, visual storytelling, and the construction of environments that feel both intimate and otherworldly.

Contact

shumingzhou08@gmail.com

LinkedIn | Shuming Zhou

Practice

How can emotion become a habitat?

My work explores how personal memory, fragmented recollection, and the search for belonging can be translated into emotional landscapes, using image, sound, character, and digital environments to make inner experience visible and shareable.

Awards

Victorian Premier's Design Awards | Australia
Digital Design – Finalist
2025

Architizer A+Awards | USA
Architectural Visionary of the Year – Special Mention
2025

Edge Architecture Festival Budapest | Hungary
Winner, TOPIA / Virtual Insanity
2025

Fondation Jacques Rougerie | France
Focus Prize, Architecture and Innovation for Space
2022

Exhibitions

Melbourne Design Week | Melbourne, Australia
Future Naarm: First Light
2025
House Show Exhibition, Robin Boyd Foundation | Melbourne, Australia
Future Naarm: First Light
2025
Wild Hope, Now or Never Festival | Melbourne, Australia
Future Naarm: First Light
2023
+MODEL Barcelona Architectures Festival | Barcelona, Spain
Extreme Imaginings: Fractal Cities
2023
Federation Square Experience Lab Showcase | Melbourne, Australia
Future Naarm: Mists and Shadows
2023

Experience

Independent Practice
Aug 2025 – Present
Environment Artist & Worldbuilding Designer
Creating Fry the Moon, an original allegorical worldbuilding project exploring emotional landscapes, memory, and spatial storytelling through realtime environments, animation, and immersive media.

Superscale / RMIT Immersive Futures Lab
Nov 2022 – Aug 2023
Environment Artist & Worldbuilding Designer
Developed realtime environments and spatial storytelling systems for exhibition and interactive experiences, bridging game engines, architectural speculation, and public cultural contexts.

Tectonic Formation Lab, Roland Snooks
Apr 2023 – Jun 2023
Film & Photography
Produced short-form films documenting glass 3D-printing fabrication processes and large-scale exhibition sculptures for Melbourne Design Week, Australian Manufacturing Week, and the Venice Biennale.

RMIT University
Jul 2022 – Oct 2022
Research Assistant
Supported resin-based 3D printing workflows and material experimentation for organic architectural research projects, including underwater environment visualisations in Unreal Engine connected to the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture.

Independent 3D Practice
Apr 2022 – Jun 2022
3D Artist
Developed early 3D modelling and realtime asset workflows across Blender and Unreal Engine, including the recreation of a large-scale physical aircraft installation as a navigable game asset for Urban Explorer, a Neighbours Game Jam project.

IAPA Design
Nov 2018 – Feb 2019
Architectural Design Intern
Supported early-stage resort design development through SketchUp modelling, spatial studies, and concept exploration.

Education

The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL | London, UK
MArch Architecture (Part II)
Sep 2023 – Jul 2025

RMIT University | Melbourne, Australia
Bachelor of Architectural Design
Mar 2019 – Nov 2021

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