About
Three ways of seeing. One practice.
Storyjoy sits where architecture, education, and storytelling meet. Each discipline asks a different question about people — together they make it possible to design the conditions in which connection can happen.
Architect
Thinks about how people experience space, relationships, context, needs, and desire.
Educator
Thinks about how experiences are scaffolded so people can move from curiosity to understanding to participation and possibility.
Storyteller
Knows how to listen closely, surface what is beneath the obvious story, and shape human material into experiences that help people see themselves and others differently.
Founder
Joy Lau
Architect / LEED-AP · Documentary filmmaker · New York Emmy–nominated · Creative producer · Digital solutions designer · Educator · 20+ years of multidisciplinary experience
Joy founded Storyjoy in 2022. She spent more than a decade as an architect, designing emotional spaces where clients could write the intimate stories of their own lives — and then carried that way of thinking into film, animation, digital work, and live gatherings.
Architecture taught her that experience is designed. Education taught her that understanding is built in sequence. Documentary work taught her that people reveal what matters only once they feel seen. That combination is why Storyjoy begins with people and their context rather than with a format — and why the form of a project can change while the attention behind it does not.
Her work has been made alongside cultural institutions, public agencies, schools, nonprofits, and houses of worship across New York City and beyond.
The idea behind the work
The Power of Feeling Seen
What happens when people feel genuinely seen?
Joy's TEDx talk explores the power of creating the conditions for people to reveal themselves — and what becomes possible when we meet one another with attention, acceptance, and curiosity.
The talk is where the practice begins: the questions in it are the same questions behind every Storyjoy experience.
What could happen if people felt invited to connect?
Tell us what you're trying to bring people together around.