“The International Summer Programme in Architecture: Cities in Asia (Studio Singapore-Shanghai) is a three-week credit-bearing course organised by the HKU Department of Architecture. Founded in 2010, it is an annual design and research studio that travels to multiple cities in Asia. Taught by a diverse group of faculty members from HKU and speakers from internationally renowned universities and independent research groups, the course offers participants an unrivaled learning experience within Asia’s most dynamic contexts.

This year, the programme will travel to the cities of Singapore and Shanghai. In particular, students would study the effects of industry, manufacturing and other forms of production, and their adjacency to requisite urban functions such as housing and commerce. These forms of production have new appearances as late-industrial or post-industrial forms, because of their strategic importance and complex organisation within the highly urbanised contexts.

Through this course, students will focus on different urban environments and building typologies, especially in the way they resist and subvert, or become mutated or subsumed by the highly transformative urban conditions today. The studio and seminar assignments would be based on the examination and re-invention of a number of these building types, seeking out strategies of cooperation, exploitation, adaptation, and even conflict. Students will have the benefit of visiting unique areas of the city under-going massive change, exploring and discussing broad-ranging issues through historical and theoretical concepts in identity, post-colonialism, nationalism and globalisation. Learning activities include lectures, seminars, studio crits, field work, visits to experimental practices and sites, and forums for active discussions.”

This event description is available on the website, where is also available more information about the event.