ABE Department Announcement — Final Design Review (Design Studio 3A | ABEE 3055)

The Department of Architecture and Built Environment (UNNC) is pleased to invite colleagues and students to the Final Design Review of Design Studio 3A (ABEE 3055), Academic Year 2025–26, titled Subversive Grounds: Designing with Environmental Agency.

Date & time: Friday, 19 December 2025, 12:30–18:00

Venue: Trent Building, Room 405

Guest Critics:

Cecilia Chu (School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Aldo Cibic (College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University + Aldo Cibic Workshop)

Yuting Xie (Institute of Landscape Architecture, Zhejiang University)

Yimin Su (School of Architecture, Chinese Academy of Art + Sun Architects)

Studio Tutors: Andrea Palmioli, Yucong Zhang (Department of Architecture and Built Environment, UNNC)

This year’s studio opens with a foundational question: What if landscapes could actively resist, shape, and negotiate human intervention? The studio investigates landscapes as temporal, adaptive agents whose ecological, hydrological, and agrarian dynamics both constrain and redirect human actions. Working in Qidong and the broader Nantong region of the Yangtze River Delta, students examine how soil, water, agrarian cycles, climatic variability, and local heritage have historically shaped spatial and socio-economic adaptations.

The pedagogical aim is to rethink design as a negotiation with environmental processes: landscapes that subvert political and infrastructural agendas, climate dynamics acting as supra-national forces, and communities adapting through situated, historically grounded forms of knowledge. The review will present speculative yet contextually rooted design strategies responding to ecological rhythms, socio-spatial adaptations, and emerging hybrid formations across rural–urban gradients.

All ABE colleagues and students are welcome to attend.