ARCH5110/6210C
Advanced Architectural Design Studio I & II: FIELDS – Delta Plug-ins
Target Students MArch1, MArch2
Course Term 1 & 2
Course Type Studio
Venue Studio
Teacher(s) CAI, Jiaxiu
This studio begins with water. In the Pearl River Delta (PRD), water is not just a resource or a risk—it underlies the shaping of cities, settlements, infrastructure, ecology, and daily life. The deltaic landscape is dynamic, influenced by shifting riverbeds, tidal flows, wetlands, fishponds, and estuaries. Strategically located, the PRD has been central to China’s development, from the Reform and Opening Policy in the 1980s to the Greater Bay Area nowadays. The architecture, infrastructure and landscape in the PRD exist in an interconnected network, forming a shared field and territory – together, they act as the agency for urban adaptation and transformation.
Liquid Conditions
Flowing systems of water, goods, people, capital, and policy define the PRD’s territories. Delta Urbanism provides a framework to work with these dynamic, multi-scalar processes rather than against them (Meyer, 2008). Infrastructure, from ports to roads and villages, is not static but part of evolving territories. Architecture acts as an adaptive agent, mediating environmental processes and socio-economic development.
Students will approach the PRD as a complex system and develop an understanding that spans across-scales (architecture, urban and regional) and across-layers (landscape, infrastructural network and architectural occupation). Students will design “plug-ins”, that create conditions and activate systematic changes for PRD’s future. Methodologies include mapping and prototyping to analyse the PRD’s West River territories, under themes of water towns, port territories and megaprojects. Mapping serves as a generative tool for design, revealing the environmental, infrastructural, and socio-political conditions. Prototyping tests strategies in response to eco-hydrological systems, economies, governance, and community needs. Through this process, students will position architecture as a mediator between territorial systems and lived experience and design interventions that shape both local places and impact long-term regional transformations
