AIA 2021 – Serve and Inspire
Dear Members and Friends,
Greetings, and a warm welcome! This is our first AIA Hong Kong Chapter Newsletter of 2021.
I want to begin with a note of gratitude to our 2020 President, Vicky Chan, and to EXCO, and committee members for their distinguished service. Despite the challenges brought on by COVID, the Chapter offered no fewer than 13 LUs and 17 HSW/LUs over a host of webinars, FAIA speaker series, and a spirited design competition jointly hosted with RIBA to design community spaces for our past Community Citation winner, Light Be. These events told stories of resilience in our community, investigated wellness trends, debated deep learning in places of work, and explored the future of automated design and sustainable urban developments. They were well attended by local members and brought us closer to overseas chapters.
I would also like to recognize Yimei Chan, our Chapter’s first GBA representative, who, together with Florence Chan, 2020 secretary and 2021 vice president, have amassed a core group of architects in the region ready to collaborate with the Chapter.
On Chapter matters, I am pleased to welcome Graphisoft into our Corporate Affiliate program. As one of the leading champions for Open BIM, Graphisoft will share the latest trends and capabilities of BIM platforms in an upcoming series of seminars and deep-dive workshops.
The 2021-25 Strategic Plan is now complete. Special thanks to Scott Brooks for leading the strategic planning process; to Megan Donges and Yimei Chan for their direction during the formulation of the program; to Yimei, Yanshun Lee, and Christian Low for studying the strategic plans of other National Components for background information; to Yina Ng for shepherding the member survey from concept to collation of results; to Valerie Or for her valuable contributions throughout, and particularly for digesting volumes of National Component strategic planning reports; and to Nelson Chen, FAIA, for distilling the output from our planning workshops into the core statements that form the basis of our 2021-2025 Strategic Blueprint. More details to come on our website and posts, so do keep an eye out for them. In the meantime, I invite each of you to read the member survey summary report and, in particular, the top seven most requested items on page 6 of the report, which underpins our focus this year.
With that in mind, the 2021 theme to “Serve and Inspire” frames our strategy:
◦ To serve is to commit to the betterment of others, and to lead by doing, and thereby
◦ To inspire future generations of Citizen Architects
To grow our membership, we need to invest in our members and partners, current and future.
So this year, in addition to traditional building tours, technical seminars, and workshops, our programs committee, led by members Fei Mui and Su Chang, will be working closely with YAG chair Hinki Kwong to launch a series of initiatives aimed at promoting emerging practices, supporting aspiring Architects on their path to licensure, and implementing mentorship programs for all.
– The First project series will invite emerging practices both from within the membership as well as from around the world to share stories about their first commissions.
– In conjunction with grumpy hours, fire-side chats will aim to provide emotional and profes-sional support in a more casual setting. This will be a precursor to the formal mentoring program in the works.
– The Path to US Licensure will invite students from HKU, CUHK, Chu Hai College and CityU, all schools with HKIA accredited architecture programs to join YAG chair Hinki Kwong as he speaks with local graduates Dennis Cheung, Su Chang, and Josely Lam on their experiences and progression from local universities to the US and back. This event will be co-hosted with HKU, CUHK, Chu Hai College, and CityU.
– Open BIM workshops with Graphisoft will showcase the latest trend towards inclusive, open platform BIM collaborations, and follow on deep-dive workshops.
The first few confirmed events from these series will be as follows:
February 8th YAG: Path to US Licensure
February 18th Programs: Rediscovering Bishop Hill Reservoir
February 25th Programs: First Project Sereis / New Office Works
March 11th Programs: BIM and Computational Design / Graphisoft
June 11th Programs: First Project Series / Kwong Vong Linow
October 8th Programs: First Project Series / Chenchow Little
Please subscribe to the program’s calendar here and stay tuned to announcements for upcoming events. With a bit of luck, we shall resume physical events in Q2 / Q3. In the meantime, if you have any program suggestions and/or would like to submit a question to the Q&A portion of our events, please put the event name on the subject line and email your suggestion/questions to programs@aiahk.org by February 12th.
The Chapter is what we make of it. It is my honor to serve with such a committed team, and I look forward to meeting each and every one of you in due course.
Special thanks also to past president Kevin Lim who has agreed to stay on as our IR representative this year, to Caroline Chou for stepping up as treasurer, Ivy Tam for her years of service as membership chair, Joyce Lam, our incoming membership chair, Elva Tang, for a stellar job on H&A, Mona Yeung incoming H&A chair, and Peter Basmajian, who continues his long history of serving members and the Chapter by chairing, and hosting, the Nominating Committee for the 10th consecutive year.
Lastly, I would like to recognize the following individuals who have given their time to serve on Chapter committees in 2020, many of whom are staying on in 2021.
COMMUNICATIONS
Catherine Kao
Scott Brooks
HONORS & AWARDS
Elva Tang
MEMBERSHIP
Nick Chan
Brian Cheung
Tommy Siu
Ivy Tam
NOMINATING
Christine Bruckner
Nelson Chen
Yimei Chan
Darryl Custer
Sujata Govada
Anderson Lee
Simon Leung
Christian Low
Eric Schuldenfrei
Peter Cookson Smith
Peter Basmajian
PROGRAMS
Robert Dani
David Fung
Hinki Kwong
Sunnie Lau
Carlwin Martirez
Fei Mui
Betty Ng
Evelyn Ting
Po Tin
Paul Tse
Winston Yeo
YAG
Caroline Chou
Warm Regards,
Winston Yeo, AIA
2021 President