About

The School of Architecture at The Chinese University of Hong Kong is firmly committed to developing students’ core competency and critical thinking in order to achieve design creativity and leadership that enable lasting contributions to our built environment. The curriculum is structured not merely to train students to join the architectural profession, but to educate them in adapting to inevitable, future changes to be encountered during their careers.

Under the leadership of Professor Peter W. Ferretto, the School seeks to integrate design and research in its accredited professional programme comprising four-year BSSc in Architectural Studies and two-year MArch degrees. Other postgraduate degree includes the MSc in Urban Design, in addition to the MPhil and PhD research degrees.

There is no more exceptional time and place to study and practice architecture and urban design than now in Hong Kong, situated at the heart of the region in China and Asia where 21st century cities are changing and growing with unprecedented speed and scale. Our graduates will be challenged to become both visionary and grounded in order to design buildings and cities both beautifully and responsibly while striving to shape a better world for their generation.

“To teach architecture is to practice architecture; to practice architecture is to teach it” Interpretation of Tim Ingold’s quotation in “Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture” (2013)

It is with great honour and pride that I present my vision for our School. First, I would like to express my gratitude to my predecessor, Prof. Hendrik Tieben, for his dedicated leadership over the past three years. I would also like to extend my thanks to our Dean, Prof. CY Chiu, for his support and belief in my vision, as well as to all the faculty members who have endorsed it.

As I begin my tenure as director and introduce the new academic year, I believe the most effective way to outline my approach is by sharing with everyone–particularly our SOA students –the vision I previously shared with the faculty. This vision defines an ambition and a conviction that Design should be at the core of our School, empowering students to become better architects and engaged citizens.

Collectively We Generate

The School of Architecture at CUHK embodies values rooted in three key principles: Social, People, and Place. My vision is straightforward: to establish an “Espresso” school that focuses on design culture. Espresso is astonishingly complex, yet universally understood to be both energy-giving and an element of community-building. We can become a school characterised by boldness, rich flavour, and the ability to energise creativity.

My vision focuses on reviving the School’s legacy in Hong Kong and globally, establishing our identity as a hub of Social Engagement. Central to this vision are people, with teaching, research, and practice deeply intertwined in a calibrated approach towards architectural education. Drawing inspiration from anthropologist Tim Ingold, the notion that “To teach architecture is to practice architecture; to practice architecture is to teach it” aligns with the values I aim to encourage during my tenure. Instead of reacting to the evolving world, I advocate for proactively embracing change through design.

Taking cues from the Bauhaus, which, in 1921, confronted the challenge of industrialisation by transforming “craft” into a pedagogical project, I believe our school is uniquely situated to become a house of architecture ready to tackle and influence pressing issues of our times. With “Collectively We Generate” as our guiding principle, highlighting the importance of people in our mission, our School will be poised to navigate the complexities of a constantly changing environment. From addressing Sustainability and Climate Change to fostering Diversity and Inclusion within our educational framework, I am committed to ensuring that architectural education remains pertinent and adaptable to societal needs.

Empower

We live in an environment of “No’s”. My ambition is to foster a culture that embraces “Yes”. Creating an environment where individuals feel empowered to excel in their research, teaching, and personal growth. This requires trust, respect, and team spirit. During my leadership roles I have learned that by empowering others, you improve exponentially; Delegating, Trust and Coordination are the ingredients I aspire to adhere to. In a post-Covid world, working together and injecting energy into the School is the key to our success. We need to understand and simplify our operative structures; reduce redundancy, prioritise content over bureaucracy, and provide oxygen to students and faculty.

In my role as Director, I plan to build this capacity for growth and improvement, by:

1. Intellectual Stimulation,
2. Transparent Leadership,
3. Focusing on Design Issues,
4. Encouraging Curiosity and Participation.

Faculty members have to be recognised and rewarded for their contributions, confidence is fundamental to achieving success. The concept of an “Espresso” School reflects my ambitions and inspiration to be a Director. I’m proud to share my vision with you and I’m excited about the possibilities of working together with colleagues. I look forward to turning our shared aspirations into reality.

Finally, I wish to reach out to all our students–you are the beating heart of our School. Together, we will pursue an architecture that listens, strive to improve people’s life conditions, remains cautious of uniformity, and steers clear of preconceptions, where your talents are expressed through empathy.

The most radical shift begins with a question, a willingness to situate ourselves in conditions rather than conclusions, to inhabit the in-between, and to seek meaning not from the isolated object, but from the fabric of relationships that make it possible. As we embark on this new academic year, our guiding principle is simple, yet profound: Learning from Nature, not as metaphor, but as context, process, and a living field of negotiations.

Learning from nature is not a retreat to a “pure state”; it is an opening up, a movement toward the complexity that nature reveals at all scales, from the structure of a leaf to the cycles of a river, from the emergence of a bird’s nest to the adaptive intelligence of a city. Nature models co-existence, resilience, incompleteness, and collaboration, the very qualities our built work should aspire to.

This orientation invites us to shift perspective. Instead of seeing architecture as a set of objects imposed onto a site, we explore how architecture emerges from, rather than in spite of, the conditions that surround it. Each project becomes a conversation with landscape, microclimate, resource flows, local knowledge, and the social, biological, and material ecologies that orbit every act of building.

The welcoming of our first Landscape Architecture class is not only a milestone; it is an invitation for all of us to reposition the ground beneath our feet. This is a call for more porous boundaries: between disciplines, between theory and practice, between making and unmaking. We ask: What if the architect’s hand is not the master, but one of many actors? What if every intervention is also an experiment? What if the path to sustainable futures lies not in invention alone, but in the careful reading and re-reading of the site?

To learn from nature is to prototype with nature. It is to approach design as an iterative process: testing, observing, adapting, respecting uncertainty and the passage of time. Just as the forest is not static, our design studios become testing grounds for models, sketches, mock-ups, structures, and stories. Nature is a material intelligence, bamboo bending under load, water tracing its path, wind redirecting form. By tracing these patterns, we can ask better questions and make better decisions, together.

We celebrate the spirit of collective authorship. We value the workshop as much as the desk, the field as much as the screen, the hand as much as the algorithm. We are researchers, teachers, and students, but we are also facilitators, documenting the voices, histories, and aspirations that define a place. Our process values observation, participation, and contingency. We embrace ambiguity as a productive space, a place where new relationships and forms can emerge.

This year, let us focus on nature as condition. Not a backdrop, not a catalogue, but the web of systems and relationships through which design evolves. Can we make work that is generous to its environment, generative for people, for ecologies, for memory? What does it mean to build so as to leave room for changing contexts and latent possibilities? How can design become a support for other life, not an assertion of our own authorial will?

We invite you all, students, faculty, collaborators, local experts, into this laboratory of conditions. Let this school be a landscape of continuous inquiry, where we map, gather, test, and reflect together. May this year be marked not only by what we finish but also by how we slow down, listen, and learn along the way.

To learn from nature is to be adaptive, iterative, and generous. It is to design not for perfection, but for continuity, planting seeds for futures we cannot entirely predict, but hope to sustain. Let’s discover, together, what nature can teach us, if only we are attentive to the conditions that allow things and ideas to grow.