Date/Time
Date(s) - August 27, 2021
7:30 pm - 8:30 pm

Categories

• HSW

Dear Members,

AIA Hong Kong is excited to continue our First Projects Series, conversations about “the construction of a practice” with talented young individuals who have initiated and maintained a career in architecture and design.

In this series, architects from Hong Kong, the US, and the Asia-Pacific region reflect upon how their firm started – be it a first house, a lost competition, an unsolicited proposal, or a work on paper – and how that became the catalyst for the architectural adventures they are in now.

The next talk in the series is by Kenan Liu, co-founder of Atelier XUK.

Having received his education, and practiced, in both Switzerland and China, Kenan and his office now focus on the idea of construction in a contemporary context. For Atelier XUK, types of construction are not restricted to the production of spaces and objects, and the characteristics of a site are not simply about “borrowing or blocking” the current understanding of the here and now. Atelier XUK considers these two topics in relation to how daily lives are transformed in the process of urbanization – and the shared memories of people using these environments.

This speaker will focus on how Atelier XUK considers building activities in the context of the contemporary city.

Details:

Date: August 27, 2021 (Friday)

Time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm (HKT)

CES Credit: 2.0 LUs/HSW

What We Learnt:

• Working in less-developed context doesn’t necessarily mean lower quality of craft, but demands new forms of creativity to consider local labour and ways of making in the early stage of the project;
• The lessons learned in the less-developed area could then feed back to the projects in more-developed cities – economy of means could lead to a more efficient and sustainable way of construction;
• A lot of the building regulations in the city are obsolete in relation to the current urban development, and architects should participate in the discussion with the government and the community in identifying specific regulations to be relaxed for particular projects that have specific social meaning and impact.

Recording:

Speaker’s Profile

Kenan Liu

Atelier XUK was established in Shanghai in 2010 by Kenan Liu and Xu Zhang, who were undergraduate classmates at Tongji University. Liu received a Master’s Degree from Tongji University and previously worked for Herzog & de Meuron in Switzerland. He has taught at the University of Hong Kong Shanghai Study Center and now serves as a design instructor at Tongji University.

By selecting and combining different types of construction methods in specific contexts, Liu and Atelier XUK endeavor to strengthen the characteristics of specific sites to establish a greater sense of place.