Fred Liao is the founder and a director of PLAT Studio. He has engaged his passion for large-scale landscape and urbanism as a multi-disciplinary practice. Born and raised in Taipei, he spent 10 years on the East Coast and in 2010 settled in beautiful Northern California with his wife, two daughters, and his dog Parker.He is a licensed landscape architect with extensive large-scale, site-specific masterplan and landscape design experience in both North America and Asia, building large urban parks, mixed-use developments, as well as office and academic campuses. His work focuses on conceptualization, systematic framework, and design studies; he envisions design as a dynamic process of investigating site potentials culturally, ecologically and economically, for timeless placemaking, and a more sustainable world.