ARCH5110/6110B
Advanced Architectural Design Studio I & II – Regenerative Landscapes
Target Students MArch1, MArch2
Course Term 1 & 2
Course Type Required
Venue Studio
Teacher(s) CHUNG, Thomas / LAM, Joshua
Urban Hong Kong is tightly controlled within a quarter of the city’s territory, as is the rigorous protection of the rest of our rural landscape in the form of country parks, wetlands and reservoirs. Within the last decade, due to many new developments in the New Territories and the overall housing and land supply problems in Hong Kong, more attention is put on debating the relationship between the natural environment and rural developments, including the planned New Development Areas (NDA) and the substantial changes that would be wrought on these rural areas by these and other infrastructure-led mega-projects, such as the Northern Metropolis Development Strategy (NMDS). The focus shifted to the urban-rural interface and New Territories’ diverse terrain.
This year’s studio uses Northern New Territories’ eco-cultural landscape as a point of departure and employs regenerative design as the thematic drive for architectural interventions. We will focus on the topic of Rural Placemaking with respect to Hong Kong’s countryside conservation, focusing on processes, outcomes and impact of “place-enabling” architecture and practices for community well-being. We will establish the values and drives for rural revitalisation, study and visit exemplary cases in Hong Kong, Mainland and abroad to build up a best-practice framework. We will assess the impacts and issues of architectural transformations in the countryside and co-develop a stewardship model for
sustainable revitalization through participatory “action research”, culminating in concrete architectural proposals for localised scenarios to regenerate rural values.
Our study area will be associated villages of Sha Tau Kok, its settlement clusters along hill-to-coast landscape, including the Hing Chun Yeuk Alliance (慶春約七村) Hakka villages Lai Chi Wo (荔枝窩), Mui Tsz Lam (梅⼦林) Kop Tong (蛤塘), also other Hakka villagers Kuk Po (⾕埔) and Yung Shue Au (榕樹凹) together with Tanka-inhabited Crooked Island (吉澳) and Ap Chau (鴨洲). Such authentic “village-inplace”
settings and cultural landscape comprise landscape topography, settlement configurations to architecture and cultural heritage.
We will co-create conservation strategies for selected village settlements and their hinterlands by engaging residents and stakeholders. Together with interdisciplinary collaboration, we will propose innovative scenarios with radical architectural interventions as catalysts to enact regenerative futures for Sha Tau Kok remote villages.
We will design rural placemaking architecture as Village Community Hub / Rural Revitalisation Workstations (鄉村社區空間 / 鄉郊復興⼯作站), tentatively around 3,000sqm for different villages, as settings to enable reciprocities/connections between urban and rural, volunteers and villagers, architecture and landscape. The basic programme comprises spaces for welcoming volunteers and visitors who help to revitalise villages, i.e. multipurpose room, exhibition spaces, short-term accommodation, while workshop or communal spaces celebrate happenings and culture of the community and place. The selected villages represent a diversified socio-cultural landscape, from Hakka to Tanka culture, agricultural to fishery-driven settlement that would provide inspirations for specific programmes, spatial ideas and tectonics from student-initiated research, design development and technical design.
