Lab.
The edge, before it becomes the centre.
Yūgen Lab explores what comes after content. Cultural R&D, speculative design, and immersive prototypes that test how technology should feel.
The experiment.
Emotionally responsive interfaces. Spatial storytelling. New cultural objects like Hearables and The Unnamed, where products and language evolve together.
This is where Narrative Architecture stays honest: where the method meets conditions it hasn't encountered yet, and comes back changed.
Futures you can feel.
This is where Narrative Architecture stays honest: where the method meets conditions it hasn't encountered yet, and comes back changed.
Futures you can feel.
The Unnamed.
Language design | Cultural R&D | Human–AI
The feelings are here. The words aren’t yet.
The Unnamed.
The feelings are here. The words aren’t yet. A living glossary of AI collaboration that captures the inner weather of working with machines: blur, vertigo, comfort, ache.
Built as a curated submission platform, The Unnamed turns unspoken sensations into shared vocabulary, making the invisible shifts in agency, intimacy, and attention speakable.
Not productivity hacks. Not tool reviews. The felt experience, the body signal, the change in the room.
Launching with a carousel of new words and an open invitation to submit a feeling, it’s cultural R&D for humans trying to stay human whilst the tools get smarter.
Browse the words.
Submit a feeling.
Help name the new terrain.
Role: Self-initiated. Conceived, designed, and built end-to-end, concept, platform architecture, visual identity, and editorial direction.
Built as a curated submission platform, The Unnamed turns unspoken sensations into shared vocabulary, making the invisible shifts in agency, intimacy, and attention speakable.
Not productivity hacks. Not tool reviews. The felt experience, the body signal, the change in the room.
Launching with a carousel of new words and an open invitation to submit a feeling, it’s cultural R&D for humans trying to stay human whilst the tools get smarter.
Browse the words.
Submit a feeling.
Help name the new terrain.
Role: Self-initiated. Conceived, designed, and built end-to-end, concept, platform architecture, visual identity, and editorial direction.
What the Ground Holds.
Language design | Cultural R&D
A Field Guide to Felt Places.
One person's reading of the world. Partial, subjective, unfinished.
One person's reading of the world. Partial, subjective, unfinished.
What the Ground Holds.
We have more ways to find places than ever. We have fewer ways to feel them.
What the Ground Holds is a field guide to places as they are experienced: cities, parks, small towns, and in-between spaces, layered with memory, atmosphere, and lived attention. Some places described here still exist. Some have changed. Some are gone. That is not a limitation. It is the point.
This is not a guide for finding things. It is a record of noticing them.
Places are documented through felt qualities: why they mattered, what they held, what stayed. Not recommendations. Not rankings. A different kind of orientation, one that treats memory, taste, and lived experience as valid forms of navigation.
The first entry is already written. In 1999, we moved into a warehouse in Plough Yard, Shoreditch. We did not know that three metres below our floor lay the walls of the Curtain Theatre: the stage where Shakespeare's company performed Romeo and Juliet for the first time, in 1597. We lived there for five years. We made the founding work of Hi-ReS! We had not known.
Places change. The signal in the ground stays.
Role: Conceived and authored the framework and first edition, designing a new language for navigating places by human signal.
What the Ground Holds is a field guide to places as they are experienced: cities, parks, small towns, and in-between spaces, layered with memory, atmosphere, and lived attention. Some places described here still exist. Some have changed. Some are gone. That is not a limitation. It is the point.
This is not a guide for finding things. It is a record of noticing them.
Places are documented through felt qualities: why they mattered, what they held, what stayed. Not recommendations. Not rankings. A different kind of orientation, one that treats memory, taste, and lived experience as valid forms of navigation.
The first entry is already written. In 1999, we moved into a warehouse in Plough Yard, Shoreditch. We did not know that three metres below our floor lay the walls of the Curtain Theatre: the stage where Shakespeare's company performed Romeo and Juliet for the first time, in 1597. We lived there for five years. We made the founding work of Hi-ReS! We had not known.
Places change. The signal in the ground stays.
Role: Conceived and authored the framework and first edition, designing a new language for navigating places by human signal.
Reanimated.
The lost web | Flash-era | Cultural memory
Flash-era web experiences from the Hi-ReS! archive, brought back to life.
Fragments from a lost internet, restored as living experiences.
Fragments from a lost internet, restored as living experiences.
Reanimated. Witnesses to another kind of web.
Reanimated brings selected Flash-era web experiences from the Hi-ReS! archive back into the present with contemporary web technology and AI.
They return to a different internet than the one they left. What once unfolded at modem speeds, with loading bars and quieter attention, now reappears in a world of feeds, noise, and acceleration.
Their meaning has changed.
They are no longer just websites, but witnesses to another kind of web.
Entry 01. moshi-moshi.
LOVE YOUR? | NTT Data | 2001
Originally created in Flash by Hi-ReS! for NTT Data’s Mind the Banner project in Japan, moshi-moshi responded to the theme LOVE YOUR?
A small digital world of geometric environments, shifting between day and night.
They return to a different internet than the one they left. What once unfolded at modem speeds, with loading bars and quieter attention, now reappears in a world of feeds, noise, and acceleration.
Their meaning has changed.
They are no longer just websites, but witnesses to another kind of web.
Entry 01. moshi-moshi.
LOVE YOUR? | NTT Data | 2001
Originally created in Flash by Hi-ReS! for NTT Data’s Mind the Banner project in Japan, moshi-moshi responded to the theme LOVE YOUR?
A small digital world of geometric environments, shifting between day and night.
Hearables.
Speculative design | Wearables | Culture
A new category concept: hearing technology redesigned as wearable culture.
Hearables.
Hearables is a speculative design concept that reimagines hearing tech as wearable culture: objects people choose rather than medical devices they hide. It explores the ear as a site of identity through jewellery-led forms, heirloom shells engineered for existing devices, and future-facing partnerships between audio, fashion, and AI.
We're looking for collaborators across Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, jewellery and industrial design, audiology, audio engineering, and fashion to help pilot the first expression.
Role: Self-initiated. Conceived and directed the concept and design thesis. Currently in development. Private brief available on request.
We're looking for collaborators across Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, jewellery and industrial design, audiology, audio engineering, and fashion to help pilot the first expression.
Role: Self-initiated. Conceived and directed the concept and design thesis. Currently in development. Private brief available on request.
Why it matters.
The Lab isn't separate from the practice. It's where the practice stays alive.
Studio and Dōjō are sharper because of what we test here.
At the edge, before it becomes the centre.
Studio and Dōjō are sharper because of what we test here.
At the edge, before it becomes the centre.
Collaborate.
Lab projects happen through partnerships, residencies, and pilots.
Want to prototype with us?
Reach out directly.
alexandra@yugenstud.io
Signal first. Then build.
Lab projects happen through partnerships, residencies, and pilots.
Want to prototype with us?
Reach out directly.
alexandra@yugenstud.io
Signal first. Then build.