HKU Moodle

This course examines a history of architecture through the lens of the architectural profession, both internationally and with specific regards to Hong Kong. Architectural design and production have particular contexts and cultures long shaped by the professional demands, responsibilities, and standards placed upon architects. We will study the history of these forces and their effects upon the architect, beginning with the nineteenth-century transition of building as a vocation into the profession of design, through the rise of the modern professional architectural practices, to today’s discourse on current and future modes of architectural work.

Through readings, intensive in-class discussion, student presentations, and field trips, we will trace the consequential influences that have rippled through the field of architecture over time, informing how architecture has been defined, taught, practiced, and understood by the general public. We will look closely at changes wrought upon architecture by new modes of education, the effects of colonialism, clients and capitalism, postwar development and “world planning,” corporatism and conglomeration, and neoliberalism, among other factors.

Students will be expected to produce a well-researched genealogical theorization of past, present, and/or future architectural practice in Hong Kong that will contribute to a group exhibition to be held in the department’s PMQ exhibition space. Individual case-studies will use textual and visual research, field work, and other forms of documentation at the student’s discretion to illustrate the significance of their particular theorization to our overall understanding of the nature of architectural practice in Hong Kong.