Title of Talk: The Once and Future Hong Kong: A Dialogical Reading of a City

Guest Speaker: Dr Cecilia Chu

Date: Thursday, 11 December 2025

Time: 1:30 – 3pm

Venue: IEB124

Co-Organisers:

Institute of Asia Pacific Studies (IAPS), Department of Architecture and Built Environment (ABE Talks), Urban Innovation Lab (UIL) 

Abstract:

Hong Kong has long been characterized as a place of in-betweenness – caught between Britain and China, East and West, and other dualities. The study of Hong Kong’s architecture and urbanism has often succumbed to these well-worn tropes, which over time have limited our understanding of the city and denied it a sense of specificity. This has resulted in reducing a complex and unique place to a mere cliché. Paradoxically, it is this uniqueness that makes the task of documenting, archiving, and curating the city’s architectural and urban history particularly challenging. The high population density, for example, has created a chronic shortage of space, leading to some of the most expensive real estate in the world, while simultaneously limiting opportunities for conserving its built heritage. Moreover, Hong Kong’s humid, subtropical climate, combined with relentless pressure for development, has made the retention of buildings and their ephemera difficult. Fortunately, we are witnessing a burgeoning interest in more critical historical scholarship about the city and its built environment. This lecture will share some of this scholarship and offer a dialogical reading of Hong Kong through a series of distinctive thematic juxtapositions. The goal is to unravel the complex – and sometimes contradictory – aspects of the city’s architecture, landscapes, and urbanism. These qualities have emerged over time, influenced by a variety of climatic, geological, cultural, economic, and political forces. Together, they shape the design, construction, planning, and management of the city in important yet underexamined ways. The discussion will provide a new perspective that departs from longstanding stereotypes and illuminates the unique characteristics of Hong Kong at significant moments in its history. 

Speaker’s bio:

Cecilia L. Chu is an Associate Professor and Director of the MPhil-PhD Programme in the School of Architecture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Trained as an urban historian with a background in design and conservation, her research and teaching focus on the social and cultural processes that shape the forms of built environments and their impacts on local communities. She is the author of the award-winning book, Building Colonial Hong Kong: Speculative Development and Segregation in the City, which received the 2023 Best Book Award from the Urban History Association and the 2024 International Planning History Society Book Prize. Her other book publications include The Speculative City: Emergent Forms and Norms of the Built Environment (2022) and Hong Kong Built Heritage (forthcoming 2026). Chu is a co-founder and past president of the Hong Kong Chapter of DOCOMOMO (International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites, and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement). She serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Urban History, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong, Surveying and Environment, and Built Environment. She received her PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

To express your interest, please click the link HERE for registration. We look forward to seeing you there.

If you cannot access the link please register here:

registration link: https://forms.office.com/r/JdBFHn2R78