With interdisciplinary rigor, a hybrid approach to research and practice, and deep engagement with the profession and community, Song has advanced a series of façade studies with sponsors such as the U.S. Department of Energy, the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, the Buffalo Urban League, and a global solar panel manufacturer. His work has been published and presented widely through peer-reviewed and professional press articles, international exhibitions, symposia and public lectures, and academic conferences.

Directly rooted in the repetitive nature of building facades, much of Song’s work explores what he calls the “Ritual façade,” or projects that harness the symbolic value of exteriority as a means of community-building.

In 2025, Song and partner Douglass Alligood were selected through a public competition to design a memorial for victims of the May 14, 2022, racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo. Forming a space for lingering, reflecting, and remembering, “Seeing Us” consists of 10 interconnected, stone-faced pillars – one for each of the ten victims – that coalesce at varying heights around a support building with a sweeping design and rooftop Memorial Walk. “This project lies at the intersection of critical questions about memory, healing, public engagement, social justice, and the role of architecture and its façade,” Song says of the project, which is set for construction by 2027.

A transit-oriented housing design developed by Song and Alligood was selected earlier this year by the Chicago Department of Planning and Development for their design of an $18 million mixed-use project in Chicago’s West Englewood neighborhood. The proposal, developed in collaboration with a local architect and developer, highlights the project’s façade and building form to convey the identity of transit and speed, while community-focused retail spaces are articulated to produce the identity of the neighborhood.

For the Hongdo Information Center completed in 2023, a winning proposal by Song and a local architect JHKA for a public design competition sponsored by the National Park Service in Korea, Song essentialized the architecture to merely a window with a design that carefully frame the threshold between land and sea and organizes a deep, open plaza that extends the landscape into the building. The project received a 2025 Architizer A+ Awards Special Mention.

In “Just Throw It!!,” with support from NYSCA and the Architectural League of New York, Song developed an alternative part-to-whole system for which passersby tossed colorful, lightweight, interlocking blocks to collaboratively construct a shading pavilion. Installed in 2024, the design investigates block morphology and stacking intelligence informed by new technologies like drones, human-machine coordination, and additive manufacturing. It was named a finalist in THE PLAN’s 2024 Special Projects Award.

Song is also concerned with the façade as a vehicle for performance, efficiency and lower carbon footprints in buildings, which account for 41 percent of energy consumption and 38 percent of CO2 emissions in the United States. This research is pursued through an engineering lens and, in many cases, through collaborations with UB’s Sustainable Manufacturing and Advanced Robotic Technologies, a research community for which Song is a former co-director.

For the GS Medical Center renovation in Seoul – another built work – performance and aesthetics come together in a building-integrated photovoltaics façade that Song designed in collaboration with KOES, a solar panel manufacturer. Creating a facade of color, texture, and pattern that appears differently across time, weather, and season, the 1,000-square-foot wall features an overarching pattern of traditional BIPV (Building-Integrated Photovoltaic) panels interrupted by ribbons of colored panels and LED strips.

A 2017 conceptual project called “Snapping Façade” offers a sustainable, playful alternative to conventional, energy-hungry dynamic facades using elastic instability and a mechanically controlled, retractable shading system. The proposal took first place in the Architect’s Newspaper 2017 AN Best of Design Awards in the research category and a 2018 iF Design Award.

Song also applies this participatory design concept to alternative construction and assembly methods in the prototype SIMS (Snap-Interlock Module System). Winner of the 2019 Forge Prize from the American Institute of Steel Construction and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, the structural system distributes forces through its stacked and interlocked configuration of four-legged steel modules – a system easily executed by a single worker. Both Snapping Façade and SIMS were developed through interdisciplinary collaboration with Jongmin Shim, UB associate professor of civil, structural, and environmental engineering, with Daniel Vrana (MArch '15, BS Arch '13), former director of the SMART Fabrication Factory at the School of Architecture and Planning, also contributing to the development of SIMS.

Song says these design research works are centered on the human experience and collective interaction among people beyond the function, efficiency, and conventional performance of the facade. “Ultimately, I am interested in the contemporary building façade as a mechanism for integrating technical elements and socio-cultural elements to create ‘ritual spaces,’ where novel community interactions occur, identities are reclaimed, and meaningful yet invisible connections between people are embodied and made tangible, all by the agency of exteriority.”

As an educator and mentor, Song introduces students to the façade as an integrative, exploratory design dynamic, rather than an isolated topic. The approach has fostered extensive professional and interdisciplinary engagement across design studios, research seminars, and dozens of independent study, thesis, and directed research collaborations with students.

Song is director of curriculum and former director of undergraduate studies for the Department of Architecture. He also works with the Asia Research Institute as a member of its steering committee and is a past member of the School of Architecture and Planning’s Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment Committee, providing design guidance on both the Hayes and Crosby Hall renovations. Additional service appointments include the Banham Fellowship Search Committee, ARCC King Medal Committee, Mentor Committee, and faculty advisor for the UB National Organization of Minority Architecture Students. Song has also served on UB’s Asian Study Advisory Council since 2014.

He earned his Master of Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and a BS in Housing and Interior Design from Seoul’s Yonsei University.