BAAS Y4 Studio Fall 2025, University of Hong Kong
Teachers: Kent Mundle (with Joshua Bolchover and Jersey Poon)
Settlements in the world’s developing economies represent the front line of the world’s most pressing issues: mass migration; climate change; and the increasing wealth gap between the rich and poor. The effects of these issues are already present in these areas such that residents must face a near perpetual state of crisis and recovery, whether its from drought, floods, extreme weather, or declining yields, which are each exasperated by existing housing and infrastructure shortages, which in turn increases a vulnerability to the economic effects that come with these events. Providing the necessary infrastructure to these rapidly urbanising regions is critical to develop adequate resilience for future growth and its consequences.
The requisite sustainable finance to address these urgent needs has been pledged by the world’s economic powers, but the only thing holding it back is a lack of packaged, bankable projects. Thus, the aim of this studio is to develop a set of prototypes for urban infrastructure targeting the locus of where this infrastructure is often needed most in these settlements: THE EDGE.
This studio developed an Urban Framework of Infrastructure Prototypes: a collective strategy of punctual social infrastructures that are fundamental to the future development of the urban periphery in Dhulikhel, a traditional settlement in the Kathmandu Valley.