Date 26.11.2020
Location Yunnan, China
The Post-earthquake reconstruction demonstration project of Guangming Village designed and built by the One University One Village (1U1V) team has received HKIA Medal of the Year Outside Hong Kong and Special Architectural Award – Social Innovation. Being the only Medal winner this year, the team responds to the specific context of Guanming Village not by imitating the form of the traditional local architecture, but through the “3L” (local technology, local materials, local labour) principle. The prototype house, constructed for an aged couple in Yunnan Province, demonstrates how bio-climatic design, cost-effectiveness, aesthetics and residential needs can be taken into consideration and implemented simultaneously. HKIA judges praised the project for providing rural villagers solutions to “realise their own houses in a manageable and affordable manner”, proving itself “to be an influential social and architectural reinvention”.
The project, led by Prof. Edward Ng, Dr. Wan Li and PhD student Chi Xinan, and in collaboration with Dr. Emily So (University of Cambridge) and Prof. Bai Wenfeng (Kunming University of Science and Technology), has previously won multiple awards including the Top Award of World Building of the Year 2017 at the World Architecture Festival (WAF), the Gold Award (Residential Category) at the HKIA Cross-Strait Architectural Design Symposium and Awards 2019, the Grand Award (Completed Projects – Residential Building) in the New Buildings Category in the Green Building Award 2019. It realises one of the essential goals of academic research – to contribute to the community and assist the needy through knowledge production.
More information about 1U1V team
Our graduates Vince Yiu (MArch 2010) and Jessie Wong (MArch 2020) also received the Honorable Mention at the HKIA Young Architect Award 2019 and the HKIA Student Medal 2020, respectively, on the same occasion. Learn more about their projects here.
