HKU Division of Landscape Architecture

03/10/2026

02/10/2026

[LAND2201 - E1 Exploration: Translating Space and Tactility]

Students grounded their interests and focus through charcoal drawings and abstract physical models. Bodily, tactile, and spatial experiences are translated into 1:1 drawings to foreground tangible and intangible qualities of the Pinewood Battery (Lung Fu Shan). The models conveyed a physical re-interpretation of these qualities by using diverse materials.

P1-P2 Fung Tze Ning, Cherry
P3-P4 Cheng Cheuk Ni, Ella
P5-P6 Kobayashi Yuzumi
P7-P8 Li Ching Hin, Oscar
P9-P10 Lui Ho Wang, Elvis
P11-P12 Lam Sze Hang, Skyla
P13 Pang Yat Tung, Harold

Instructors:
Francisco Cevallos Barragan F.Cevallos.Barragan
Zeqi Liu Zeqi
Teaching assistant: Bessie Bai Bessie_X

29/09/2026

[LAND2201 E1 Exploration: Embodiment]

In the first assignment of LAND2201, students learned from the Pinewood Battery (Lung Fu Shan) by exploring its tangible and intangible qualities; the exercise took them to embody the place, relate human scale to existing elements and phenomena, and capture moments where nature and body meet to consolidate a ’miniature panorama‘ (Vogt, 2006).

The recurring field visits required students to examine the landscape through direct physical engagement to experience the tactile. Moreover, using physical postures such as leaning, fitting, or stretching; the body itself became a tool to untold scale, spatiality, and proportion.

P1 Lui Ho Wang , Elvis; Fung Tze Ning, Cherry
P2 Cheng Cheuk Ni, Ella; Kobayashi Yuzumi
P3 Dai Mingjin, Kim; Shum Yan Wing, Sophie
P4 Koo Ho Long, Daniel; Moody Tobias William James Gange

Instructors: Francisco Cevallos Barragan F.Cevallos.Barragan
Zeqi Liu Zeqi
Teaching assistant: Bessie Bai Bessie_X

16/09/2026

LAND7131 MLA Design Studio I - ARCH7233 MLA Design
Studio III

We are happy to celebrate our exciting and diverse
‘Vertical Studios’ for this fall term!

All studios are ‘vertically’ structured, with students from both the first and second year of the MLA programme, aiming to foster a more diverse studio culture and learning.

Cycles of Water: Climate adaptation and public
infrastructure
Instructor: Raffaella Endrizzi

Infrastructural Evolutions [i.e.]: Hacking our Streets to
Celebrate Dynamic Hybridity
Instructor: Jason Hilgefort

Paper Mill Park: Shifting Territories Collective Urban Memory
Instructor: Jutta Kehrer

On the Edge: Energy & Ecology
Instructor: Michael Kokora

Forest as Archetype: Typologies, Spatial Practices, and Design
Instructor: Kate Lau

Rural Futures: Contextualising Sha Tau Kok in the Northern Metropolis Development
Instructor: Vincci Mak

Landscapes for Nature Education: HKU Kadoorie Centre
Instructor: Susanne Trumpf

Resonance: Design as a Medium Between People and Landscape
Instructor: Yujun Yin

08/09/2026

[2025-26 Spring ARCH7299 MLA Thesis Student Work Series]

Reframing the Water Edge:
Landscape Heritage Reflection on Hong Kong Water-Dwelling People’s Knowledge

Hong Kong’s water-dwelling communities have long understood the water edge through tides, mobility, and adaptive relationships between land and sea rather than fixed terrestrial boundaries. Yet these spatial logics have been largely excluded from contemporary landscape planning. This project investigates how traditional environmental knowledge can generate alternative approaches to waterfront design.

The research adopts a fragmentary mechanism of inquiry, assembling oral histories, fishing routes, tidal temporalities, ritual practices, archival traces, and spatial observations as dispersed yet connected forms of evidence. Rather than reconstructing a singular historic narrative, these fragments operate as generative clues through which variable patterns of marine use, flexible water territories, and dynamic land–water interfaces can be inferred and spatially reinterpreted. Through this process, the water edge emerges less as a line than as a fluctuating field shaped by stewardship, temporality, and use.

Building on these findings, this thesis aims to investigate how traces of the knowledge might be reactivated within contemporary increasingly fixed, land-oriented spatial and functional planning context. Through a series of water-edge interventions on Lamma Island, the project identifies residual conditions where traditional practices persist, and transforms them into sites for spatial engagement, where echoes of boat people’s environmental knowledge can re-enter contemporary tidal landscapes.

Thesis supervisor: Ivan Valin
Work by Lyu Anyi Anny Lvani

04/09/2026

🎉We are excited to welcome the MSc Conservation (2026-27 Cohort) to the HKU community! 🎉

Kicking off with a campus tour and pizza party, our new students are beginning their journey with a series of engaging warm-up lectures and workshops, exploring Hong Kong‘s
rich history and connecting digital heritage strategies with issues of sustainability, resilience, and historic landscape revitalisation.

By carefully examining historic maps and aerial photos, and using site visits, field observations, and GIS data, they are learning how to read and interpret the evolving landscape of Hong Kong. A perfect foundation for their upcoming conservation journey.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates and activities in HKU MSc Conservation! 🌿🏛️✨

02/09/2026

[2025-26 Spring ARCH7299 MLA Thesis Student Work Series]

Sand Unfixed:
Reframing, Reworking and Adapting Hong Kong’s Artificial Shores

Hong Kong’s artificial beaches are currently managed as static recreational assets through flattening, intensive cleaning, and repeated sand replenishment. These practices are costly, ecologically damaging, and unable to respond to erosion, storms, and changing coastal processes. Using Golden Beach in Tuen Mun as a prototype, Sand Unfixed reframes the artificial beach as a dynamic socio-ecological system that supports recreation, climate adaptation, sediment retention, and habitat formation.

The project proposes three integrated strategies: Beach Morphology, Hydrology Control, and Habitat Co-evolution. Foreshore dunes, micro-topography, reserve sand ridges, planting, reef modules, seagrass patches, dead branches, and habitat structures reshape water and sediment movement while encouraging ecological succession. Discarded marine ropes, oyster shells, timber, and inert construction waste are reused as low-impact coastal infrastructure.

A beach typology and strategy matrix extends the proposal beyond Golden Beach, matching interventions to geomorphology, wave exposure, ecological potential, and public use. Through phased implementation and seasonal maintenance, the project replaces repetitive repair with an adaptive model in which Hong Kong’s beaches can evolve with shifting sand, water dynamics, habitat growth, and recreation.

Thesis supervisor: William Shivers William Shivers
Work by CHANTsunHang Ares 𝗔 𝗥 𝗘 𝗦

25/08/2026

PDLA Landscape Media II

Landscape forms, especially those that are natural, infrastructural, or productive, contain multi-layered data and information beyond their aesthetic appearance. However, human activities, hazards, or environmental intrusions have significant transformative power that can alter the form and behaviour of such landscapes. This course explored and discovered the mechanisms and operational systems of transformable landscapes - to experiment with design interventions that have the potential to generate new landforms and their associated functions, behaviours, and evolving feedback over time, ranging from the prototypical scale to the territorial scale. Students in this course researched and experimented with data visualization, form finding, AI, parametric and digital fabrication technology, worked with the limitations and explored new possibilities in landscape design.

Instructor: Qijin Huang, Hana Hana
Teaching Assistant: Jonson Jin

P1: Isip Dennis Jason Vidar
P2: Xia Runqi & Yu Yihao
P3: Wang Xiaoya & Wong Yuk Hong
P4: Xia Runqi & Yu Yihao
P5: Wang Xiaoya & Lau Wing Ho
P6: Kwok Man To
P7: Wang Jiahui
P8: Wang Xiaoya & Wong Yuk Hong
P9: Xia Runqi
P10: AI concept render by Cheung Wang, Yu Yihao, Wong Yuk Hong, Isip Dennis Jason Vidar, Wang Jiahui & Wang Xiaoya

24/08/2026

🎓 Celebrating Excellence in Heritage Conservation
We proudly congratulate our MSc Conservation graduates on completing their master’s thesis. Their research exemplifies academic rigour and critical engagement with a wide range of topics on heritage conservation.

🏛🌿 Research at the Forefront
Spanning diverse geographies, their work advances:
• Urban heritage and Hong Kong’s streetscapes
• Heritagisation, memory, and identity
• Industrial adaptive reuse across China
• Rural villages and vernacular architecture
• Historic gardens and water landscapes
• Community and religious heritage
• Digital innovation in interpretation
• District-specific conservation challenges

These theses contribute actionable insights to policy, practice, and public discourse on sustainability and cultural continuity. Our graduates join a global community preserving cultural legacy while rethinking societal engagement with history. Their work embodies our mission to bridge scholarship and impact—ensuring heritage remains a living resource for future generations.
To our students: your curiosity and courage inspire us. Here’s to a future where heritage and innovation advance together. 🌏✨

HKU Landscape MSc Conservation HKU

19/08/2026

MLA Year 1 and PDLA Course LAND7151, Landscape Technology I 

Instructor: Mr Gavin COATES Gavin Coates
Teaching Assistant: Mr LI Huanyang, Mutsing Huanyang LI
 
1.      This course prepares students with a foundational understanding of the engineering of sites and the ways in which design objectives are translated into built form. Lectures and assignments are organized around topics including: site topographical analysis and responsive site planning; landform; the design of structural elements such as walls and steps; soils and earthwork; storm water management. Field trips included Hong Kong Park Waterfall Area, and several Tseung Kwan O new town infrastructure projects, both instructive case studies of topography in urban landscapes. Tutor, Gavin Coates, worked on the design of these projects in the mid-1980s.
 
2.      This course prepares students with a foundational understanding of the engineering of sites and the ways in which design objectives are translated into built form. Lectures and assignments are organized around topics including: site topographical analysis and responsive site planning; landform; the design of structural elements such as walls and steps; soils and earthwork; storm water management.  The ‘Working Drawings Assignment’ required students to redesign the sloping topography of an area on campus to cater for universal access requirements while preserving existing trees. 

Image captions:
01, 02 Field Trip to Hong Kong Park Waterfall Area
03 Using a surveyor’s level to measure the topography on campus
04, 05 Using a surveyor‘s level to measure the topography on campus – extract from student video assignment (0.28 minutes; 4.10 minutes), Cheung Wang Warren, Ho Chun Man Chris, Isip Dennis Jason Vidar, Kwok Man To Man 2, Lau Wing Ho Wing Ho, Wang Jiahui Ada
05 Tseung Kwan O Kwun Tong Tunnel Portal before and after
06, 07 Tseung Kwan O Po Lam Road lookout point
08, 09, 10 Tseung Kwan O Duckling Hill so-called “Borrow Area”
11, 12 Isip Dennis Jason Vidar Working Drawings Assignment
13, 14 Li Ruiqi Working Drawings Assignment