MArch Studio Fall 2023, University of Hong Kong
Teachers: Joshua Bolchover, Kent Mundle and Jersey Poon
The studio is a Lab: a site of experimentation and testing with real communities on real sites facing pressing and urgent issues. What role do we have as architects as agents of change? How can architecture shift detrimental urban processes towards the creation of climate resilient urban fabric?
Architecture, like history, sits at the intersection of the biological and cultural. How can we understand these different, yet interconnected, systems, their organization, and their scalar relationships, in order to make architecture that informs the urban ecology in which it is located?
For DDU Lab Kathmandu, the site this year is in Lalitpur, Nepal, a richly layered and diverse urban context that has been ravaged by the 2015 Ghorka earthquake. Working in a collaborative model with our local partners in Kathmandu, we will develop spatial prototypes and incremental strategies that present an alternative model for future transformation in Lalitpur.
Whereas DDU Lab: Impact Incubator is an opportunity for students to develop a prototype within the Framework of the DDU Lab. The site selection and program is developed by students based on the urgency of the issues they have identified and the ability of a project to address and change the current condition.