Target Students BSSc 3

Course Term 1

Course Type Studio

Venue Studio

Teacher(s) CHOW, Kelly / ENDRIZZI, Raffaella / PRICOP, Ioana Alexandra / FINGRUT, Adam

ISSUE

Architecture is no longer a discipline of static forms and fixed functions but a dynamic practice that must respond to rapid environmental, social, and technological shifts. The studio ADAPT challenges you to interrogate the term’s multiple dimensions—material, ecological, procedural, and existential—as a critical lens for contemporary architectural practice. How can we adapt vacancies?

In Hong Kong, where spatial constraints and heritage preservation collide, adaptive reuse demands inventive retrofitting strategies: how do we reimagine existing buildings for new uses while preserving their cultural and structural value? Adaptive reuse is not just about sustainability—it’s about rethinking the life cycle of architecture itself. Beyond preservation, adapting to the climate crisis demands a shift in how we design, pushing us toward resilient materials, passive systems, and structures that can withstand extreme weather. To adapt is not only a reaction to external pressures— the term also speaks to the iterative nature of design itself—an open-ended process of testing, failure, and refinement. What if we embraced this fluidity, treating architecture as something that can learn, adjust, and even repair itself over time? Most urgently, to adapt is to survive – a biological imperative that architecture must embrace in an era of instability. Cities, buildings, and communities must continuously transform to remain relevant.

This studio invites you to position your work within these discourses. In an architectural context, so frequently the outcome of an inability to adapt is vacancy – empty buildings, empty streets, housing that can no longer sustain living. Will you engage with Hong Kong’s layered urban fabric, proposing radical reuse? Will you prototype climate-adaptive architectures? Or will you treat design as a live, evolving system? In defiance of tabula rasa, we ask ourselves “How can we work with what exists?” The brief is deliberately open: adaptation is not a single strategy but a mindset. Your task is to define its agency in your practice –because the future belongs to those who adapt.