http://www.arch.hku.hk/programmes_/dla/

HKU Division of Landscape Architecture, 6/F Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong (2026)

Q: What is the address?

6/F Knowles Building, The University Of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road

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

15/08/2026

The landscape design studio Ho Chi Minh City Futures: Typologies to Overcome takes MLA students to read and understand an unfamiliar context within Southeast Asia across scales and respond to the urgent needs of the place. Working alongside local partners, students explored the frictions between development and climate change exposure in Ho Chi Minh City‘s hectic urban core and its peripheries. Their projects proposed site-sensitive approaches addressing the lack of high-quality urban space in increasingly dense districts, the ecological regeneration of neglected sites, and landscape continuity across fragmented urban and rural territories.

Instructor: Francisco Cevallos Barragan F.Cevallos.Barragan
Teaching Assistant: Yapeng Liu Olly Olly Liu

P1: Reclaiming the Swamp by Xiaoying Chen, Eleanore.
P2: Reviving the Water Edge: A Canal-side Community Strategy for Cholon by Lo Cho Yann, Minnie
P3: Stitching the Edges: (Re)connecting the Two Worlds by Li Ruiqi, Anny

14/08/2026

The landscape design studio Ho Chi Minh City Futures: Typologies to Overcome takes MLA students to read and understand an unfamiliar context within Southeast Asia across scales and respond to the urgent needs of the place. Working alongside local partners, students explored the frictions between development and climate change exposure in Ho Chi Minh City‘s hectic urban core and its peripheries. Their projects proposed site-sensitive approaches addressing the lack of high-quality urban space in increasingly dense districts, the ecological regeneration of neglected sites, and landscape continuity across fragmented urban and rural territories.

Instructor: Francisco Cevallos Barragan F.Cevallos.Barragan
Teaching Assistant: Yapeng Liu Olly Olly Liu

P1: Reclaiming the Swamp by Xiaoying Chen, Eleanore.
P2: Reviving the Water Edge: A Canal-side Community Strategy for Cholon by Lo Cho Yann, Minnie
P3: Stitching the Edges: (Re)connecting the Two Worlds by Li Ruiqi, Anny

04/08/2026

𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐥 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐆𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐲 | 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨 (𝐌𝐋𝐀𝟏, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔) 𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐢

This semester, the studio turned its lens toward the historic city moat of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Titled ”INVISIBLE SPACE“ (無明空間), the studio challenged students to investigate complex spatial, cultural, and socio-economic dynamics, designing light yet impactful landscape interventions that champion humanity, inclusivity, and spatial equality for all urban users—from local vendors and long-time residents to immigrants and marginalized communities

Transcending traditional site boundaries, students identified critical locations along the moat to propose interventions unconstrained by spatial redlines. Their design inquiry was grounded in iterative physical modeling—bridging urban context, artistic conceptual exploration, and large-scale material testing to evaluate the real-world impact of their designs on everyday users.

LAND7132 MLA Design Studio II [Section 2D, 2025]
Instructor: Bin Jiang Bin Jiang (The University of Hong Kong)
External Advisor: Pongsakorn Suppakittpaisarn (Chiang Mai University)
Design Tutorial Instructor and General TA: Mutsing Li Huanyang LI
Field Trip Teaching Assistant: Huiwen Xiang
Book and Panel Drawing Teaching Assistant: Xueming Liu

04/08/2026

𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰 | [𝐂𝐡𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐚𝐢] 𝐋𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐨 2026, 𝐌𝐋𝐀1

On May 6th, our Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA) students successfully wrapped up their final design reviews for ARCH 7131: Landscape Design Studio II, led by Prof. Bin Jiang! This semester, the studio turned its lens toward the historic city moat of Chiang Mai, Thailand. Titled “Invisible Space” (無明空間), the studio challenged students to investigate complex spatial, cultural, and socio-economic dynamics, designing light yet impactful landscape interventions that champion humanity, inclusivity, and spatial equality for all urban users—from local vendors and long-time residents to immigrants and marginalized communities.

Highlights of the Journey:
- Deep Contextual & Ethnographic Research: Uncovering hidden micro-histories and informal spatial behaviors along the 700-year-old city moat.
- On-Site Participatory Fieldwork: A hands-on site investigation in Chiang Mai featuring 1-on-1 partnerships with local students, participatory interviews, and community engagement.
- Iterative Design & Multi-Scale Physical Modeling: Translating social empathy into space through hands-on physical models, spatial testing, and detailed material studies.

A heartfelt thank you to our external advisors, guest critics, teaching team, and collaborative partners in Thailand for their insightful feedback and continuous support! Huge congratulations to all MLA students for their extraordinary dedication, empathy, and rigorous work throughout the semester.

MLA1 Spring 2026, ARCH7132 Landscape Design Studio II
Instructor: Bin Jiang Bin Jiang (The University of Hong Kong)
External Advisor: Pongsakorn Suppakittpaisarn (Chiang Mai University)
Design Tutorial Instructor and General TA: Mutsing Li Huanyang LI
Field Trip Teaching Assistant: Huiwen Xiang
Book and Panel Drawing Teaching Assistant: Xueming Liu

HKU Division of Landscape Architecture

08/09/2026

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02/09/2026

25/08/2026

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