This studio explores landscape as a product of interactions between natural and man-made systems (rather than just as a set of objects). It helps students to develop skills in researching, observing, interpreting, recording and representing the landscape, and to expand students’ abilities to analyse, conceptualise and present integrated and meaningful designs for site-scale landscape interventions.

 The studio emphasises the use of physical models, aligned with analytical drawing, as essential steps in the design process, and as a way of conveying spatial forms, material qualities, and narratives of past histories, current activities, and possible futures.  Through these we can gain insight and understanding of the inter relationships, connections, adjacencies, dependencies, pathways etc. inherent in every landscape and use these to develop coherent rationales for designed intervention.

In the densely built-up context of Hong Kong public open space is scarce, often lacks site-specific design, and appropriate maintenance. Beyond the larger parks and sports grounds and the smaller Sitting-out Areas and Rest Gardens, playgrounds have caught attention from the government and the community in recent years. Playgrounds, in particular, were already critiqued for many years for their unimaginative and ‘safety-first’ designs before repeated several-months closures during the Covid-19 outbreak sparked once more heated debates. The importance of adequate open space for the well-being of the community is now in the spotlight with a range of governmental and non-governmental initiatives emerging around it. This momentum is the starting point for this studio.

The Design Studio investigates the role of ‘playscape’ in Hong Kong and analyses the topic typologically, morphologically, and socially. The course focuses on concepts of community design, paying attention to the role of society and urban context in the design process. Before designing within a complex and challenging urban setting, students are asked to develop a keen understanding of and the ability to engage with its complexities and multi-layered conditions.

The relationship between the representation of landscapes and the production of landscapes are integral. Drawings, models, or other types of representational tools offer possibilities in understanding the landscape in different ways and are a critical part of the design process rather than simply a presentation tool. In this studio, we shifted between drawings and models, experimenting with an iterative and cyclical process of documentation and speculation. Students used established means of representation to develop a composite and complex understanding of the landscape. The studio examined the relationships between people and the natural and built environment. Through a series of exercises, students developed their skills in landscape architectural representation; identified and analysed key aspects that shape a site context; developed a vocabulary to build landscape experiences and proposed appropriate interventions in natural and developed contexts. The final design exercise was sited on the Jubilee Battery, an area rich in history and subtropical ecology in Hong Kong Island. Remnants of Hong Kong’s coastal defence batteries are juxtaposed with a newly constructed educational facility, bringing a diverse set of users to the site. Students explored a dynamic palimpsest of the site which led them to the design of a path and a sequence of outdoor spaces.

“Museum” is often understood as a space with a collection of works / objects on display for public education or engagement purposes. Most “museums” are indoor, but there are more and more “museums” with grounds for displaying works / objects outdoor. Some are even called “open air museums” because most of the works / objects they are showcasing are to be appreciated outdoor. “Tree museum” is a relatively new type among “museums”. One can interpret this as a display of a collection of trees. One can also go further to explore how contemporary “tree museums” are different from other more traditional landscape typologies like botanic gardens, arboretums, and etc., which are also for display of vegetation.

The first exercise took students to explore familiar streets and their objects through the lens of a designer. Random walks inspired by the situationists’ derives were performed. Students represented their walks and chosen objects or situations through diagrams, photography, and drawing. The second exercise took students to play with origami-like structures. Following a set of given constraints, they transformed a piece of cardboard into a three-dimensional object; an object with no assigned use. The resulting useless object was then transformed by linking it to a function borrowed from one of the objects found in their previous walks. Finally, students worked on a site-specific intervention. Taking Bernard Tschumi’s follies as a starting point, students proposed 12 structures to host a temporary aviary on the Peak. The project, called micro-follies, continued to explore matters such as human scale, movement, and perception in space.