HKU Division of Landscape Architecture

09/10/2026

[2025-2026 Spring ARCH7299 MLA Thesis Student Work Series]
Cotton: Towards Agricultural Ferality and Socio-ecological Resilience 

A cotton seed escapes the field. Left untended, it germinates, adapts, and flourishes where domesticated cotton would fail. While modern cotton monoculture remains vulnerable to water scarcity and land degradation, how might feral cotton inspire us about agro-ecological resilience? 

The thesis critiques the state-controlled, technocratic model of cotton monoculture in Kashgar, Xinjiang, where cotton production is centralized, standardized, and hence fragile. Feral cotton and local communities would be strategized to restore resilience through genetic heterogeneity, adaptability, and biodiversity. 

On the field boundaries where feral cotton flourishes, seeds would be produced locally by Uyghur villagers, instead of state-level research laboratories. Decentralized village-level seed banks revive local and feral cotton populations, restoring genetic diversity and decision-making autonomy, fostering landraces adapted to micro-climates, and reducing dependence on state-promoted cultivars and associated input packages. 

Field margins are feralized into biodiversity zones that integrate intercropping and bee cultivation to regenerate soil water retention and moisture levels, supporting both feral vegetation and cultivated crops. As feral adaptability and soil health improve, the disappearing hydrological network would be revived, through redesigning micro-topography stabilized by proposed rammed earth structures. 

Ultimately, the thesis envisions a resilient feral landscape, shifting from state-controlled uniformity to communal variation, adaptation and diversity. 

Work by: WONG Ka Lok, Victor Victor Wong
Instructed by Susanne Trumpf 

07/10/2026

MScSED Course SEED6104 Dissertation Part 1｜Site Visit to Mai Po Nature Reserve(MPNR): Exploring Wetland Biodiversity and Conservation in Practice

On 25 September, students from the MSc Sustainable Environmental Design programme visited Mai Po Nature Reserve with WWF-Hong Kong. They learned how the reserve’s wetland habitats are managed and why they matter to migratory birds and other wildlife.

The visit began with an introduction to Mai Po’s ecology and WWF-Hong Kong’s conservation work. Students then explored the reserve with WWF staff, observing birds and seeing how water levels, vegetation, and restored habitats are managed to support wildlife.

The visit connected classroom discussions of wetland biodiversity with the practical work of conservation. It showed students how Nature-based Solutions can support wildlife while responding to environmental pressures. These observations will inform their dissertations and consider how sustainable environmental design might respond.

More information about the MScSED program can be found at https://mscsed.hku.hk/

P1: Introduction to WWF-Hong Kong and Mai Po Nature Reserve
P2-8: Field visit exploring water management, vegetation and wildlife
P9-10: Birdwatching across habitats with different water levels
P11-14: Views of Mai Po Nature Reserve
P15: Group photo with WWF-Hong Kong staff

Instructors: Chao Ren, Siqi Jia, Shengbiao Wu
Teaching assistant: Jiani Du Jiani DU

06/10/2026

MLA1 students literally set the ‘LAND7152 Landscape Plants and Ecology I’ course rolling at Yuen Long Town Park in September 2026, getting to know how planting, topography and structures can be combined to create a range of experiences in the landscape including: 

- Reawakening future landscape designers’ inner five-year-olds with an experiential, topographical, gravitational, biomechanical, horticultural understanding of what a 1 in 3.5 gradient slope planted Axonopus compressus is good for!  
- Comparing Gavin‘s 1985 design sketches with the real thing 41 years later!! 
- Learning a first batch of about 20 tree, shrub, ground cover and marginal aquatic plant species! 

Instructor: Gavin Coates  Gavin Coates
Teaching Assistants: Han Ban Han Ban
Bai Xue Bessie  Bessie_X

 

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