Eunice Seng
Head of Department and Associate Professor

The Department of Architecture educates students in an active culture of service, scholarship, and invention. Students gain broad knowledge and skills in managing contemporary architectural practice's environmental, social, and aesthetic challenges within a multidisciplinary curriculum. With opportunities for design workshops, international exchanges, and study travel, graduates are well-prepared to contribute to the international and local communities of architects and designers.

Our accomplishments, programs, and curriculum depend on the physical, intellectual, and emotional labor of its faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The community comprises researchers, teachers, and professional practitioners with expertise and knowledge in architecture, landscape architecture, history, design, structures, materials, construction and digital fabrication technologies, AI, geospatial and environmental science, and more. This diversity drives architectural inquiry, innovation, and pedagogy across scales and complexity. Building a robust community of thriving academic practitioners, administrators, and students takes considerable effort, time, and patience. However, the lasting effects on the beneficiaries are well worth it. Each member brings their knowledge, unique perspective, and experience of architectural education and practice cultures. Collectively, we learn, question, and respond to the critical issues related to the built environment of Hong Kong and the region. Mutual learning and leadership are indispensable to each other.

Bridging Research and Design Practice. The Department focuses on building core strengths, enabling collaboration, and identifying synergies among individuals and groups with diverse disciplinary knowledge, pedagogies, and methodologies. We adapt to new modalities and metrics of excellence while committing to sustainable strategies. We create platforms for reciprocity between research, architectural practice, education, and society that address the tensions between design practice, diverse research specializations, and broad-based design objectives.

Consolidating disciplinarity and cultivating interdisciplinarity. Committed individuals with experience in curriculum development and pedagogy lead the department's programs. Department members lead and participate in many of the Faculty's research centers, deepening and consolidating individual and collective expertise through collaborative efforts considering the key issues, discourses, and emergent challenges to architectural and design education to produce creative and innovative research output consistent with the diverse modes of practices in architecture.

Co-designing and collaborating. Each design project is an opportunity for environmental and social advocacy. Every member brings valuable academic and professional expertise and connections onboard. The Department supports members’ ongoing partnerships and networks and enables collaborations for those who wish to expand or develop new ones. We continue to connect with academic institutions globally and in the region for knowledge exchange and collaborations in research, teaching, and student experiences. These efforts are consistent with my work with various institutions to discuss and develop inclusive strategies for the built environment.

Reflective Practices. To attend to the spatial, social, political, and environmental dimensions of competency entails assembling a methodological toolkit comprising historical exegeses, theoretical argumentations, case studies, and fieldwork to call out discrimination and social and economic inequalities in the conditions and processes of architecture. This extends to configuring and situating skills and capabilities towards empowerment, inclusion, and social justice, translating, transmitting, and disseminating cultural, historical, and theoretical knowledge, techniques, and practices, and seeking new forms of cooperation to broaden new horizons for architectural practice as a tool for synthesizing complex realities.

Adaptability is intrinsic to creativity and innovation. Since the first commencement class of 1955, HKU Department of Architecture graduates have contributed to the built environment of Hong Kong and China, working with the exigencies of development, density and housing shortage, environmental degradation, and, more recently, climate change. The Department is committed to building a leading learning and research platform that addresses innovation and sustainability by training reflexive practitioners who can respond attentively and creatively to society's calls for social justice through architectural action.