Professor Jiaxiu Cai is an Assistant Professor at the School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the founder of Liquid Territories, an urban research laboratory focused on design-led responses to rapid urbanisation and climate change in the Pearl River Delta. Her work operates at the intersection of landscape, urbanism, and architecture, with a particular emphasis on the co-development of academic research and planning/design practice. She explores how theory and practice can inform and respond to one another. Through both research and teaching, Professor Cai employs cross-scale analysis and complex systems thinking to investigate urban transformation and to develop new knowledge and methodologies for locally grounded design strategies.
She serves on the Scientific and Organizing Committee of the Symposium on Urban Design History and Theory, the Executive Committee of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU), the Scientific Committee on Territorial Landscape under the Chinese Society of Landscape Architecture, and the Editorial Boards of Landscape Architecture (《风景园林》) and World Architecture Review (《世界建筑导报》). She has also acted as a peer reviewer for multiple publications, including Urban Planning International (《国际城市规划》) and Blue Papers.
Before joining CUHK, she was Assistant Professor of Urban Design at Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen. She has taught at TU Delft, KU Leuven, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Huanzhong University of Science and Technology. She has practised at ThomsonAdsett (China) and KCAP (the Netherlands).
Liquid Territories is actively seeking collaborations with postdoctoral researchers and research assistants. For more information, visit: www.liquidterritories.com
