Yuyan Wu is a graduate student pursuing a dual degree in Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Washington. Originally from China, her interest in architecture began with traditional Chinese building practices, which led her to historic preservation and academia. For her Spring 2026 Urban 586 final project, completed under the guidance of instructor Holly Taylor, Yuyan documents six historic sites tracing the layered history of Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrant communities in the Pacific Northwest: five in Seattle's Chinatown-International District (CID) and one on Vashon Island.

The sites include the East Kong Yick Building (now Wing Luke Museum), Canton Alley, the Higo Ten-Cent Store (now KOBO at Higo), Fujioka Farm (now Forest Garden Farm), Hing Hay Park, and the Chinatown Gateway Arch. Each microblog connects a specific place to broader histories of racial exclusion, wartime incarceration, restrictive covenants, and community self-determination, grounded in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Immigration Act of 1924, and Executive Order 9066. Together, the sites illustrate how APIA communities built and sustained institutions, businesses, and public spaces despite legal disenfranchisement and forced displacement, and how those places continue to anchor community identity and memory today