Insights

Historically, Southeast Asia’s kampongs have quietly turned art into economic power. Today, this creative economic model thrives anew

Car parks take up a large amount of the urban footprint, and often sit empty. Can we move beyond this type of static infrastructure to design spaces that will work for our future cities?

Across Southeast Asia, the allure of smart cities has often been accompanied by a top-down implementation strategy. But one-size-fits-all solutions can miss opportunities for genuine urban improvement

The work of groundbreaking architect Christopher Alexander gives us both a lens to critique urban design and a toolkit for creating our own spaces

The trend is only growing, particularly on the Chinese mainland. What drives it, and how can planners and designers interpret it?

The End of an Era: Reliving the Demolition Process and the Legacy Left Behind by Kowloon Walled City

Working with The Oval Partnership, Wedderburn Transport Planning is using an evidence-based approach to develop context-sensitive forms of Open City Design that are culturally and commercially successful, while providing safe and comfortable access to transit stations.

Patrick Geddes is regarded by many as the father of citizen participation, and is renowned for his theories based on the “autonomous community” and “bottom-up” planning. He pioneered the place-making approach, was founder of the urban conservation movement and originated the phrase, “Think Global, Act Local”.

Digital Placemaking is a term we coined to encompass a set of data-driven processes harnessing place and people data analytics. The endeavor is to craft a toolkit for spotting emerging urban patterns—location intelligence if you will—and to capitalize on them through design and place curation for all to benefit.

Arguably the father of public housing in Hong Kong, Michael Wright was born and grew up in this city with many Chinese friends. He was interned in prison camp during the second world war. His background and personal experience were instrumental to his perseverance of building self-contained flats for the poor.

Infrastructure never exists in isolation; each is part of a larger system we call the city

Working towards family well-being centred planning and architecture

The imperial world-system underwent a reconfiguration: empire, no longer the nation-state writ large, became more fluid, capable of flowing across national borders.

Art fairs might have put Hong Kong on the world map, but they should not be the only force that shapes the city’s art development

Conservation has the potential to redefine what we traditionally regard as Architecture, and drive socio-political progress in contemporary society.

What truly makes He Fan respectable as a photographic magician is his foresight about the mentality of the contemporary urban dweller, who desires a black-and-white type of the “local” which could well be a figment of imagination in the eye of the beholder.

The symbiosis between social infrastructure and social programmes within them is fundamental to building a more equal and united society, according to American sociologist Eric Klinenberg

Third spaces or places might emerge from different contexts, but none of them refers to a physical, concrete place. Rather, they point to a zone of borderlands and convergences where ambiguities reign.

New York University sociology professor Eric Klinenberg uses first hand accounts of disasters binding communities together to support his book’s rationale that trust requires face to face contact in safe and sheltering environments

Rather than a particular point on the national territory, a city is more like a space which keeps forces and flows afloat: it neither has or has not a border, but is itself a border through which things get through.