More than Architecture
Faculty of Architecture Lecture Series, Fall 2025
5 SEP – 31 OCT 2025
Fridays, 6:30-8:00pm
Rayson Huang Theatre, HKU
Architecture as a discipline has a clearly defined core that focuses on the intervention in the tangible environment while is rhizomatically open on the periphery, informed by knowledge from the arts, engineering, science and social science, among other fields.
Due to this unique characteristic, the education of architecture prepares students to embrace the real world by entering a myriad of design professions, as well as venturing into many uncharted territories incidentally, or not?
Unpacking Contemporary:
Chinese Architecture
from the 1990s to the Present
Faculty of Architecture Symposium, Fall 2025
MON 29 SEP 2025
1:00-8:00pm
KB419, 4/F Knowles Building, HKU
Despite the fact that a great many significant buildings have been produced by architects practising in China in the past decades, contemporary Chinese architecture is still largely unknown globally, outside a small circle of observers and academic institutions. This symposium is the first of a series at the University of Hong Kong, with a panel of scholars and practitioners, both international and local, to dig, dissect, discuss, and debate about the conditions and implications of this relatively nascent architectural phenomenon.
The subject of contemporary Chinese architecture inevitably brings up a Pandora’s box of questions, led by the one of: how is ‘contemporary Chinese architecture’ defined? While this forum is meant to keep a long-waited conversation open, the following key-words/phrases are suggested as some of the points of departure:
Contemporary Chinese art
Critical Regionalism
Cultural identity
Materiality
Modern Chinese architecture
Pre-modern culture
Regions within region
Spatial structure
The vernacular vs. the official