ARCH5110/6210B
Advanced Architectural Design Studio I & II: FIELDS – Imagining the Northern Metropolis by 2025
Target Students MArch1, MArch2
Course Term 1 & 2
Course Type Studio
Venue Studio
Teacher(s) WONG, KS/ LEUNG, MK/ LAM, Joshua
The NM, spanning over 30,000 hectares, was announced in 2021 as the major driver of Hong Kong’s future development. Adopting an “industry-driven and infrastructure-led” approach, the proposed metropolis comprises four major development zones: the High-end Professional Services and Logistic Zone, the I&T Zone, the Boundary Commerce and Industry Zone, and the Blue and Green Recreation, Tourism and Conservation Zone. Each zone has distinct positioning and development goals, illustrating the vision of a new metropolis for Hong Kong.
Nonetheless, the NM intersects with a complex tapestry of social, cultural, environmental, and economic fields, from rural villages offering opportunities for urban-rural integration, to the world-renowned Mai Po Ramsar wetlands, suggesting proactive ecological conservation. These dynamic networks—fields that have shaped the past, present, and emerging metropolis—should not be seen as challenges, but as opportunities to integrate multiple forces within the official masterplan. In this way, the NM offers an unprecedented chance to devise architecture and urbanism that embraces complexity, offering an alternative to conventional town planning.
Conjoining pioneering theories on urbanism and ruralism, including ecological urbanism, designing with nature (Ian McHarg), weak urbanism (Andrea Branzi), and Ruritage, alongside empirical observation, the studio examines provocative architectural ideas within Hong Kong’s context, density, and realism. NM2050 leverages ecological, infrastructural, and territorial systems across its zones, supporting professional services, innovation and technology, commerce, and recreation under the NM Action Agenda. Opportunities lie not only in economic growth but in enhancing social and environmental capacities. Thematic explorations encourage students to engage socio-economic, cultural, environmental, and technological dimensions, culminating in collective masterplanning proposals and exhibitions in the first semester, and individual projects at selected nodes in the second semester.
