F5: Xiao Lin Talks a Stone Seal, Her Grandmother’s Mala Bracelet, an Incense Holder + More
Xiao Lin spent her formative years in the United States and China, and some of her most cherished memories are those rooted in place, from the front door of the family home to the rooms inside. “I remember the kitchen where meals were made and how everyone seemed to gather there, drawn by warmth as much as hunger,” she says.
Lin went on to earn a graduate degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, and then she traveled early in her career. Whether she was in Beijing or Amsterdam, she realized that even the most resonant spaces are never truly finished until the occupants make them their own.
In 2022 Lin founded her own firm, STUDIO XIAO, in East Hampton, New York. She specializes in residential and commercial projects. As she develops a concept, she is guided by her belief that a building should be felt before it is seen.
Her signature structures are pure in form and responsive to the natural surroundings rather than separate from the landscape. For Lin, a complete edifice is one that is really a compelling composition of mood, sound, and light, paired with her favorite materials.
Lin makes ceramics in her free time, and she enjoys how the elements unfold. “The firing and glazing bring their own surprises, outcomes you never fully planned for,” she notes. “There is a looseness that architecture, with all its predetermined processes, rarely gives you.”
Today, Xiao Lin joins us for Friday Five!
1. Birth Name Stone Seal
There is something quietly ceremonial about pressing stone to paper, the pause before, the resistance of the surface, then the reveal. This seal carries my name in traditional Chinese, carved by hand into stone, a tradition passed between generations of craftspeople who understood that the act of marking is also an act of meaning. Each impression is never quite the same.
2. Carved Horn Head Massager
Cut from a single piece of horn, the object changes with use: the tines growing smoother where fingers have pressed, the body acquiring a patina of touch. The contrast between the rougher hollows and the burnished exterior tells you exactly how it has been held, and by whom. It is a record of sensation written on the surface.
3. My Grandmother’s Sandalwood Mala Bracelet
My grandmother wore this daily, and the wood knows it. The grain has softened where her wrist met the beads, the fragrance of the sandalwood still present, faint, warm, insistent. It is my most treasured possession. Wearing this, I carry both her and her memories.
4. Handmade Ceramic Incense Holder
This piece thinks like a building. The long rectangular channel holds the incense at one end while the gently inclined base collects the ash as it falls, everything considered, nothing wasted. It has the quiet logic of good architecture: a clear diagram of function made beautiful through restraint.
5. Physical Architecture Model
We still make these by hand and in a practice increasingly mediated by screens, there is something irreplaceable about building a thing in space to understand a thing in space. Touching the roof, lowering your eye to the level of a room. The model doesn’t simulate the building, it thinks alongside it, a way of processing what drawing and rendering alone cannot resolve.
Works by STUDIO XIAO’s Xiao Lin:
Haven House
A walnut bookshelf in the primary bedroom follows the irregular roofline exactly, its rounded corners and rolling ladder holding the asymmetry of the room with ease.
Oyster Cove
A floor-to-ceiling plaster fireplace is the living room, its matte cloud-grey surface receding as the fire draws the eye. A wood-framed lounge chair and organic coffee tables ground the space in tactile warmth against the cool mineral backdrop.
Cove House
Renovated for clients drawn to mid-century sensibilities, this East Hampton residence is re-clad in elongated brick and corrugated aluminum. Materials echo the site’s existing masonry walls while sharpening the roofline’s geometry. Inside and out, a recurring slatted detail ties the facade, deck, bench seating, and pergola into a single cohesive language. The sunken pool, edged with a waterfall, drops to meet the lower level, dissolving the boundary between built volume and landscape.
Tier House
Perched high on a hillside, this residence is conceived as a quiet, fortress-like form from the street that gradually opens as you move inward. A solid front fence and rock garden create a slow, deliberate procession toward the recessed entry.
Gleason Renovation
A television room reimagined as a place of stillness. The back wall is anchored by a built-in sofa and bed with integrated lighting, a pull-out trundle tucked neatly beneath. Cabinetry folds into the window sill, unifying the wall as a single composed surface. Furnishings chosen with quiet intention turn the room into a sanctuary.
Photography by Xiao Lin.
