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![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Living-Lanes_before-and-After_MCC_image-credit-Bing-Han-copy_5000.jpg\")
\nImage Credit: Bing Han<\/p>\n
January 6, 2026
\nLiving Laneways selected as a semi-finalist ‘Big Idea’<\/b>
\n2026 Sydney Summit, Committee for Sydney<\/p>\n
I\u2019m excited to announce that \u2018Living Laneways\u2019 has been selected as a Big Idea for the 2026 Sydney Summit, run by the Committee for Sydney!
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\nImage Credit: Bing Han<\/p>\n
About Living Laneways:
\nGreater Sydney has thousands of laneways which are currently underutilised. Fronted primarily by garages or service entries, and often paved with impervious surfaces in need of an upgrade, Living Laneways aims to reconceptualise back lanes as living places which can provide housing, green infrastructure, and social and cultural engagement.<\/p>\n
Laneway revitalisation, greening, activation, safety and\/or housing has been implemented in Australia, as well as internationally. Living Laneways proposes to incorporate lessons from a variety of these case studies, bringing together community members, government agencies, subject matter experts, and other stakeholders to compile a collaborative approach to making laneways great places: liveable, vibrant and resilient. For more information, please visit here<\/a>.<\/p>\n About the Sydney Summit: You can read more about Living Laneways and the other selected Big Ideas here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thanks to Aidan Elwig Pollock at the Sydney Morning Herald for taking the time to speak with me about this, and to the team at the Committee for Sydney for their vision and support!<\/p>\n \nAugust 22, 2025 Congratulations to the MLA students for their work in the Capstone 2 studio! This year, our site was Parramatta North. In Capstone 1, the students developed a master plan for the 42ha site (i.e. inclusive of the Cultural Heritage District south of the light rail) and in this term (Capstone 2) they developed a design for a self selected 1.5-2.5ha site within their own master plan. Many thanks to our jury Roger Jasprizza, Kate Luckraft, Andrew Toland, Jesse Selby, Behanz Kalapesi, and Haylie Shum for the insightful and helpful comments, as well as to Andrew and Ben for their teaching in Capstone 1, and Simon Lloyd and all the students for their hard work this term! \nJune 26, 2025 Announced at the 2025 Awards ceremony at the NSW State Library, 27 projects were awarded this year across over 10 catagories – details available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Landscape Australia<\/i>: ‘AILA NSW jury chair Fiona Morrison said this year\u2019s awarded projects highlight the essential role of landscape architects in shaping more inclusive, resilient and liveable communities. \u201cThis year\u2019s winners exemplify how landscape architecture can transform public spaces and help shape the way communities work, live and connect,\u201d Morrison said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhilst the projects vary in scale and size, all awarded projects show how our profession is responding to the challenges of climate, culture and community with considered, places-based and purposeful design”‘<\/I>.<\/p>\n Congratulations to all the winners! it was an honour for Melissa to be part of the process.<\/p>\n \nJune 25, 2025 We are very excited to announce the publication of our edited volume, ‘Getting Political in the Neoliberal City: Planning and Design for Social and Environmental Justice’!<\/p>\n Many thanks to my co-editors Cristina Cerulli and Burcu Yigit Turan, all of the chapter authors (Alexandra Crosby, Ilaria Vanni, Catherine De Almeida, Angela Gigliotti, Doris Gstach, Evelyn Kwok, Caio de Azevedo Barros, Ger\u00f4nimo Leit\u00e3o, Johan Pries, Claudia Seldin, Socrates Stratis and Almut Wolff), as well as the team at Routledge Taylor & Francis Group for making this book a reality! <\/p>\n For more information on the book, and to purchase and read a copy, please head here: https:\/\/lnkd.in\/g4BMz7BZ<\/a><\/p>\n \nMay 08, 2025 Congratulations to the third year BLA (and 2 MLA) students for their work in the Landscape Planning and Systems studio! This year, we looked at ‘Camden North’, an area of mostly unreleased or unzoned ‘greenfield’ sites that are part of the SW Growth Area in South Western Sydney.<\/p>\n From the studio brief: Many thanks to the guest critics who joined the studio throughout the term and in the final review: Christina Silk, Jesse Selby, Sara Padgett Kjaersgaard, Andrew Mackenzie, Andrew Toland, Lingling Qiu, Bradley Colling, Nell Baboli, and Paul Melrose. Also a special thank you to Murray Wilson and Graham Matthews (and Brad, Lingling and Nell) for their excellent introduction to the site and kind welcome to the Camden Council offices! \nFebruary 13, 2025 Melissa was invited to to present her recent work, as well as meet with PhD students and be a guest design critic for Prof. Inge Goudsmit’s architecture studio. Thank to all those who participated for the lively discussion and the warm welcome!<\/p>\n \nFebruary 11, 2025 Melissa has been selected to sit on the 2025 AILA NSW Landscape Architecture Awards Jury, along with six other landscape architecture professionals who work across public and private practice.<\/p>\n From AILA: The AILA Landscape Architecture Awards provide a key vehicle for the promotion of the achievements and work of Landscape Architects in Australia. The Awards process is an opportunity for public and peer recognition of Landscape Architects’ work. It demonstrates to industry, business, government, and the wider community the positive impact the profession has on Australian lives through the planning and design of the built and natural environments.<\/p>\n AILA has presented an Awards program for over 40 years, and it has played an integral part in AILA\u2019s annual program attracting over 300 entries nationally. The AILA Awards program and its categories, objectives and criteria ensure that the program celebrates the depth of practice and contribution of the profession to our community.<\/i><\/p>\n Judging will take place this Autumn, with the awards announced in late June.<\/p>\n \nDecember 06, 2024 Melissa is excited to announce she will be working with the Parramatta River Catchment Group on the project ‘Parramatta River Bank Naturalisation and Priority Corridors Project’. Funded by the NSW Government (from June 2023-June 2026), the project has three objectives: 1) to develop strategic policy to protect and enhance existing riparian vegetation; 2) Identify priority sites within the PRCG catchment for riverbank vegetation; and 3) Deliver initial implementation (on-ground works). This project supports the delivery of two critical steps of the PRCG Masterplan<\/i> – Step 4: Standardise the Standards and Step 8: Bring in Nature.<\/p>\n \nDecember 03, 2024 Melissa and Tom are excited to announce the publication of their photo essay ‘Sidewalk Stories’ in Kerb 32: Unsaid<\/I>. The text is complemented by Tom’s photographs of the Inner West neighborhood of Dulwich Hill. The aim of the piece was to document everyday moments which are often overlooked or unnoticed, but which provide a window to understanding the human and non human occupation of the places in which we live.<\/p>\n More info about the issue, the other articles, and a link to purchase the magazine from Uro Publications can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nSeptember 09, 2024 Melissa presented work from her 2021 UTS Landscape Architecture Vertical Studio online as part of the ‘Mobility Landscapes’ session in the 2024 ECLAS conference – Regenerative Landscapes: Designing the Transition. More information on the theme and the program of the conference is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nFebruary 23, 2024 Melissa is excited to announce she will be working as a place strategist with Hoyne, a place visioning, branding and property marketing consultancy. The office works with private and public clients on creating visions for a range of project typologies, from residential and master planned communities to mixed use urban renewal and city shaping projects.<\/p>\n \nDecember 08, 2023 Melissa has been invited by Bla\u017e Kri\u017enik, Hanyang University, Seoul, to give a talk about her research and design work concerning stairs and alleys in Hong Kong. She will focus on the project Magic Lanes<\/i>, which was funded by the HK Urban Renewal Fund and conducted in collaboration with Caritas and Hendrik Tieben, as well as with local secondary and primary school and Chinese University and HK PolyU students. \nOctober 31, 2023 Melissa is delighted to announce that her artwork, Fill<\/i>, has been selected as the first prize winner at the 2023\/24 edition of Eden Unearthed at Eden Gardens (IG: #edenunearthed @eden_macquariepark<\/a>)!! It was a lovely surprise for Fill<\/i> to be selected from a field of 35 diverse, evocative, beautiful, and often playful artworks by established and emerging artists. If you are in Sydney, please come by Eden Gardens to engage with their site-specific work, as well as to contribute to (re)making FILL. You can find my artist statement, the exhibition catalogue, and explanatory videos by all the artists at the Eden Unearthed website<\/a>. And please follow Fill <\/i>on Instagram at @fill_edenunearthed<\/a> to see what happens over the next six months! FILL<\/b> Fill consists of a pile of gravel whose volume is equal to the capacity of the surrounding built edge. Drawing inspiration from Japanese dry garden (karesansui) practices, visitors are invited to collaboratively fill and shape a gravel garden through action such as shifting, raking, documenting, and (re)moving, making a place from what was once only a space. The intent of Fill is to engage visitors in a meditative process of destruction \/ construction – each visitor witnesses a unique moment in the history of the installation and contribute to its evolution through their participation.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s four ways you can get involved in Fill!<\/b> 2)\tTake photos and videos!<\/b> 3)\tTake stones home! <\/b> 4)\tCo-design Fill 2.0 and 3.0!<\/b> \nAugust 10, 2023 Melissa’s site specific and collaborative installation Fill<\/i> has been selected as one of over 30 artworks to be installed as part of the 2023\/24 iteration of Eden Unearthed, a six month long exhibition located in the award winning Eden Gardens Display Gardens and in and amongst the Eden Garden retail centre and cafe. More details to follow! Please find more information on the call for submissions and on earlier editions of the exhibition here<\/a>.<\/p>\n February 9, 2023 Melissa is excited to be giving a lecture and workshop about design research and community engagement at HKU February 9, 2023. The workshop will be conducted collaboratively with Susanne Trumpf and her BALS students as part of their studio project, which is looking two local playgrounds in the Central and Western District and how they can be redesigned with the community. December 17, 2022 Melissa is excited to be part of the launch of the new book Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei Beyond Developmental Urbanization<\/i>, edited by Im Sik CHO, Bla\u017e Kri\u017enik, and Jeffrey Hou. The book includes her chapter, co-authored with Hendrik Tieben, ‘Hong Kong\u2019s Urban Renewal Fund: A Step towards Citizen-driven Placemaking?’ Please see the information below to join us! The hybrid event will feature presentations and discussions by contributors and editors of the book, reflecting on the current state of civic urbanism(s) in Asia. Register here to join either in person (limited capacity) or online — https:\/\/forms.gle\/QMrDxpshxAJDLMp2A <\/p>\n Date: Saturday, 17 December 2022 In-person presenters: Joining online: \nAugust 26, 2022 We are excited to announce the publication of ‘Hong Kong\u2019s Urban Renewal Fund: A Step towards Citizen-driven Placemaking?’, a chapter written by Melissa and Hendrik Tieben in the new book Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei Beyond Developmental Urbanization<\/i>, edited by Im Sik CHO, Bla\u017e Kri\u017enik, and Jeffrey Hou. Please find the chapter here<\/a>, the abstract below and more information about the book (and how to purchase it) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Abstract \nNovember 9, 2021 From the brief: In order to both make these systems visible and to intervene, we need to pay attention to their evidence of action \u2013 the artifacts which indicate both a specific history and process, and also connect to a wider network. Following and documenting the path of water, we can reveal the urban evidence of these water infrastructural processes. Once we recognize, reveal and raise awareness about the water networks that surround us, we can better contribute to designing and developing interventions to enable resilient, adaptive, climate-sensitive landscapes.<\/i><\/p>\n \nSeptember 24, 2021 \nSeptember 14, 2021 Melissa and Mattais Qvistrom will be moderating a Cultural Landscape panel on September 14 2021 as part of the 2021 ECLAS conference ‘Stop and Think’. See below for the presenters and their paper abstracts and here<\/a> for a link to the full ECLAS program. Please join us for what promises to be a very interesting and engaging session!<\/p>\n CULTURAL LANDSCAPE: Relationships\u2014Public sphere, urban morphology and cultural heritage<\/b> 262. Public Sphere in Cultural Landscape 288. Transferred Cultural Ideas in New Cross Border Contexts 446. (re)Learning Relationships with Water: Dismantling dichotomy of land and water ecologies 482. Cultivating the Deep Ground: Productive land formations \nFebruary 16, 2021 In the densely-occupied, hilly urban areas of Hong Kong Island, public open space is limited and often fragmented. By necessity, these scarce spaces are multifunctional, resisting normative and typical categories of classification. Every in-between space that does exist is often a site of occupation, processes, flows, materials, wastes, and daily routines that are undertaken by both human and non-human actors. These spaces comprise a complex, mostly contiguous, network of streets, alleys, stairs, plazas, parks, Sitting-out Areas, Rest Gardens, Children\u2019s Playgrounds, privately-owned public spaces and passageways, overhead walkways, underground tunnels, terraces, planter beds, drainage channels, and even vacant parcels of land. Of these spaces, only some are labeled and maintained by the government as public \u201copen space\u201d. This latter type of official space, categorized as Parks, Children\u2019s Playgrounds, Sitting-out Areas, and Rest Gardens (the latter two being the focus of this publication), have signposted rules and sometimes full-time attendants and\/or cameras to enforce what is allowed (or not) in these, often tiny, fragments of land. However, the practices in these spaces are not limited only to \u201callowed activities\u201d, and the allowed activities are not limited only to these spaces. In fact, some practices are common to all of the parts of the more loosely defined open space network mentioned above, whereas others seem to be more unique and localized.<\/p>\n It is often difficult to distinguish which type of space one is occupying through its formal classification alone. In such dense, over-built, and often vertiginous conditions, spaces have a tendency both to bleed into one another, but also to be interrupted and disjoined in unexpected and surprising ways. Fully comprehending the ways in which human and non-human actors use, maintain, and occupy this system, requires an understanding of the complex connections between the spaces and the actors within those spaces; and their participation in both the local and wider open space network. This chapter explores the topology of these actors and sites within the larger network of public open space, highlighting the ambiguity of their formal classification and focusing on the practices which connect or disconnect many of these sites.<\/i><\/p>\n November 09, 2020 With one of the highest population densities in the world, Hong Kong suffers from a lack of public open space. Despite this situation, open spaces provided by government authorities or private developers often do not meet residents\u2019 needs or include residents in the planning and design process. To explore one way that this issue is being addressed, this chapter describes an ongoing placemaking project within Hong Kong\u2019s interstitial network of laneways (\u91cc) and alleys (\u5df7). The key historical, sociocultural, and physical features, opportunities, and constraints of these in-between spaces are discussed. This is followed by an in-depth exploration of the case study Magic Lanes, a pilot project that aims to provide more inclusive public open spaces through placemaking and community co-creation.<\/i><\/p>\n June 01, 2020 We are pleased to announce that Documenting topographic ecologies in Hong Kong: visual methods for hyper-dense and hyper-topographic urban spaces in landscape architecture<\/b>, an article written by Andrew Toland and Melissa Cate Christ, has been published. The article appears in Recombinant Ecologies in the City<\/i>, a Special Issue of the journal Visual Communication (Volume 19 Issue 3, August 2020). The issue was edited by Ilaria Vanni and Alexandra Crosby. Please find the abstract below and the article (unfortunately closed access – get in touch if you would like access) here.<\/a> This article draws on experiments with techniques of visual documentation and representation in circumstances of topographic intensity in Hong Kong. Centrally, the authors ask: how can approaches to visual representation reveal or reframe assemblages of material and immaterial processes in hyper-dense and hyper-topographic urban landscapes? The shaping and reshaping of the ground are essential parts of the formation of recombinant ecosystems, especially in intensively built-up environments \u2013 the constant reconfiguration of materials and spaces continually brings into being new ecological conditions. However, the visualization and representation of these transformations are often absent from the repertoire of techniques used to map and understand urban processes. This article addresses how landscape architecture can continue to develop methods to record, represent, visualize and design recombinant ecosystems in our urban environments. It considers which tools and techniques might provide \u2018thickened\u2019 understandings of hyper-dense, small-scale and intensely topographic urban environments like Hong Kong, with the objective of assisting designers and planners develop new ways to understand and see public space that can address the human and more-than-human nuances of complex urban spaces over time.<\/i><\/p>\n April 21, 2020 Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, ECLAS 2020 has been postposed to 2021. January 16, 2020 Contributors are invited to submit a 600 word proposal with a chapter outline, including a title, b&w image, research question(s), five key references, five keywords, author(s) name(s), current affiliation and e-mail address, a short bio, and a list of recent publications. Please send proposals to neosocialjust@protonmail.com by 16\/02\/2020.<\/p>\n November 18, 2019 The Division of Landscape Architecture at SLU (Steering Committee: Bruno Santesson, Thomas Oles, and Burcu Yigit Turan) is the host and organizer of the 2020 ECLAS (European Council of Landscape Architecture Schools) Annual Conference, to be held on 13-16 September 2020. November 07, 2019 November 02, 2019 We are pleased to announce that DigitalXPlace<\/b>, a chapter written by Andrew Toland, Melissa and Julian Worrall has been published in the edited volume, Placemaking Fundamentals for the Built Environment <\/i>(Palgrave Macmillian) Ed. Dominique HesCristina Hernandez-Santin. Please find the abstract below and the full chapter is available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Keywords September 16, 2019 Melissa presented her and Andrew’s work on photo diaries in the 2019 ECLAS UNISCAPE conference – Lessons from the past, visions for the future: Celebrating one hundred years of landscape architecture education in Europe. More information on the theme of the conference is here<\/a>, and the conference program is here<\/a>. September 12, 2019 Please join Melissa for the presentation of her project, “Investigating the formation and development of landscape architecture curricula”. The seminar will include her presentation, followed by time for questions and a discussion. All are welcome.<\/p>\n June 01, 2019 What to bring | A fully charged smartphone<\/p>\n Agenda | The workshop will consist of a short tutorial on taking photos of stairs with architect Hans Leo Maes and an introduction to the workings of the game, then we will set out to play!<\/p>\n ****************************************************************************** Stair Quest is an urban game \u2014 a game that is played by walking around in the city with your smartphone. Stair Quest is also a serious game: you are helping the Hong Kong Stair Archive project by gathering data on stair culture. Together with Melissa, the lead for the project Hong Kong Stair Archive, you will play the mobile phone game, solve quests, and help free the Spirit Dragon! All ages are welcome.<\/p>\n Stair Quest was designed by Stefan Schmidlin<\/a> and Mela Kocher<\/a>, and has been updated by Darcy Christ<\/a>.<\/p>\n What device do I need to play the game?<\/i> What is the privacy policy?<\/i> By playing this game, you are consenting to allow your anonymized player data (such as in-game content) be used for research related to stairs and Hong Kong\u2019s Stair Culture.<\/p>\n Check out the event post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n March 15, 2019 Please join us for the long awaited launch of the book STEP UP \uff0d Hong Kong stairs as productive public spaces<\/b> Part exhibition catalogue, part archive, and part provocation, this publication documents step up!, a 2013 pop-up exhibition of site-specific performances, events, and art and architecture installations that were situated on an essential pedestrian infrastructure typology \u2013 the staircase. The works reflected on conflict, ownership, responsibility and cultural occupation as a way to celebrate the uniqueness and complexity of Hong Kong\u2019s urban fabric. Visit the refurbished exhibition website here<\/a> and purchase the book here<\/a>. For additional information or enquires about purchasing the book, please contact Melissa Cate Christ at melissa@transversestudio.com.<\/p>\n The informal launch will start at 6:30pm, 15 March 2019 in the 30 Houses neighborhood, at 02 Hair Studio, located on Wa In Fong East Terrace, adjacent to the Shing Wong Street stairs. Books will be also available for purchase, and the artists and publishers will be on hand, along with drinks and snacks. Join us to celebrate Hong Kong\u2019s stair culture, grassroots communities, and cultural heritage!<\/p>\n Google map here: G\/f, 17 Wa In Fong East, Central, HongKong.<\/a><\/p>\n \nOctober 05, 2018 Please join us at the opening reception for the exhibition Sparkle! Journey of a City Foot Soldier, curated by Sara Wong. This installation includes re-interpreted selections from the Hong Kong Stair Archive. The work responds to the theme of the exhibition, Journey of a City Foot Soldier, in that they re-envison a commonly (un)seen typology of pedestrian infrastructure: the outdoor public staircase. These everyday shortcuts define the topography of many parts of Hong Kong, ones which can only be experienced through walking. Through the change in pace required to carefully, and often slowly, navigate these structures, new juxtapositions and adjacencies are discovered, creating new connections between the city and the walker, whether tourist, flaneur, commuter or local resident.<\/p>\n The Hong Kong Stair Archive (HKSA) is a collaborative pilot project to research and document outdoor stairs, initially a selection located primarily in the Central and Western District of Hong Kong Island. http:\/\/stairculture.com\/archive\/ The HKSA is part of Stair Culture, a long term research and curatorial project undertaken by Melissa Cate Christ\/transverse studio in collaboration with various artists, designers, students, curators, and cultural and educational institutions as a platform to investigate the role of stairs in defining the topographic urbanism of Hong Kong. http:\/\/stairculture.com\/<\/p>\n \u672c\u88dd\u7f6e\u91cd\u65b0\u8a6e\u91cb\u4e86\u300c\u9999\u6e2f\u6a13\u68af\u6587\u737b\u5eab\u300d\u4e09\u500b\u9805\u76ee\uff0c\u518d\u6b21\u60f3\u50cf\u516c\u5171\u6236\u5916\u6a13\u68af\u9019\u7a2e\u884c\u4eba\u8a2d\u65bd\uff0c\u5167\u88e1\u5c0b\u5e38\uff08\u4e0d\uff09\u53ef\u898b\u7684\u985e\u578b\u5b78\u3002\u9019\u4e9b\u65e5\u5e38\u6377\u5f91\u754c\u5b9a\u4e86\u9999\u6e2f\u8a31\u591a\u5730\u65b9\u7684\u5f62\u8c8c\uff0c\u552f\u6709\u6b65\u884c\u8005\u5f97\u4ee5\u9ad4\u6703\u7b87\u4e2d\u8da3\u5473\u3002\u884c\u4eba\u8e0f\u8457\u8457\u7de9\u6162\u8b39\u614e\u7684\u6b65\u4f10\uff0c\u904a\u8d70\u65bc\u4e00\u6bb5\u53c8\u4e00\u6bb5\u7684\u901a\u9053\uff0c\u4e0d\u6642\u6703\u767c\u73fe\u7d50\u69cb\u8fe5\u7570\u7684\u4e26\u7f6e\u8207\u63a5\u7e8c\u3002\u800c\u9019\u4e9b\u65b0\u767c\u73fe\uff0c\u4fbf\u5275\u9020\u51fa\u57ce\u5e02\u8207\u884c\u4eba\u4e4b\u9593\u7684\u9023\u7e6b\uff0c\u4e0d\u8ad6\u90a3\u4eba\u662f\u65c5\u5ba2\ufe51\u6f2b\u904a\u8005\ufe51\u4e0a\u73ed\u65cf\uff0c\u6216\u5c45\u6c11\u3002<\/p>\n \u300c\u9999\u6e2f\u6a13\u68af\u6587\u737b\u5eab\u300d\u662f\u500b\u8a66\u9a57\u6027\u5354\u4f5c\u9805\u76ee\uff0c\u65e8\u5728\u7d00\u9304\u9999\u6e2f\u672c\u5730\u6236\u5916\u6a13\u68af\uff0c\u4ee5\u9999\u6e2f\u5cf6\u4e2d\u897f\u5340\u70ba\u4e3b\u3002 http:\/\/stairculture.com\/archive\/ More information on the exhibition and venue here<\/a>.<\/p>\n September 17, 2018 Melissa was interviewed and quoted in the Washington Post’s article<\/a> about the damage Typhoon Manghut wrecked on Hong Kong’s built heritage and its trees. From the article:<\/p>\n “The damage, which will take days for authorities to assess and clean up, has preservationists calling for a more thoughtful way to repair Hong Kong and prepare for the city\u2019s \u201cnew normal\u201d \u2014 the reality that typhoons such as Mangkhut will be more frequent and more severe in years to come. \u201cIf this is the new normal, then we need to rethink how things are built and how they are supported,\u201d Christ said. The focus, she added, should be on how to build \u201ca sustainable and resilient Hong Kong in the face of climate change.\u201d<\/i> September 15, 2018 Melissa was invited by Prof. Laurent Gutierrez to lecture on the research and curatorial philosophy and practices behind the 2017 exhibition for the HKSA archive project, always at the edge of things and between places. Thanks to Laurent for the invitation to reflect on these practices and to the students for their insightful questions. August 07, 2018 Please join Melissa for her KTP Fellow lecture at UTS. Many thanks to Andrew Toland and the UTS Key Technology Partner Visiting Fellow Program for their support.<\/p>\n July 03, 2018 Please join Melissa for a lecture at VUW about her recent work – all are welcome! June 26, 2018 Invited panelists: Melissa Cate Christ, Michael Kokora, Valarie Portefaix, Tiffany Lau; Moderator: Prof. Nasrine Seraji, Head of Department of Architecture, HKU<\/p>\n Please join us for a discussion of the future of the Central Waterfront, including the questions: 1) What kind of inner city development does HK need?; 2) Can Central adopt a more balanced method of dealing with its heritage conservation and urban renewal?; 3) Can Central develop a more multifaceted economy beyond the repetitive construction of shopping malls and boosting retail activity?; 4) Can Central find a more sensitive approach, not only to its economy but also to its social fabric and cultural life, as well as its architecture and urbanism?; and 5) Can architecture, landscape and urbanism reclaim Central? More information on the exhibition and all the discussion panels here<\/a>. June 08, 2018 Melissa has been named a 2018 Visiting Fellow with Andrew Toland as part of the University of Technology Sydney Key Technology Partner (KTP) Visiting Fellow Program. Melissa will visit UTS in August and October as part of the program, which aims to foster opportunities for long-term research engagement between UTS and its Key Technology Partners, such as PolyU. <\/p>\n April 14, 2018 Year 3 E&I PolyU Design students and Chinese U Urban Studies students held a community engagement workshop in Shung Fung Lane to get feedback on their design proposals for the lane. Thanks to Magic Lanes for hosting and to everyone who participated! March 24, 2018 Melissa will present the HKSA as part of a one day participatory program about community integrity in high density Hong Kong, which will include the screening of parts of the documentary film, Citizen Jane. Please find more info and registration here<\/a>. March 21, 2018 Please join Melissa in a workshop to introduce and play the mobile game ‘Stair Quest’, designed and developed by Stefan Schmidlin and Mela Kocher from ZHdK with funding support from Connecting Spaces HK-Zurich and the HKADC. All ages welcome! See https:\/\/quest.stairculture.com\/<\/a> to play on your own and for more info on the game! March 01 – 09, 2018 Please join us for the exhibition of selected work from Year 3 Environment and Interiors students where each group interpreted a narrative from Italo Calvino\u2019s INVISIBLE CITIES through folding, cutting, laminating and layering paper into an area of 1.5 x 2.5 meters. More information can be found here.<\/a> February 22 – March 07, 2018 In collaboration with CACHe and sponsored by the URF, Magic Lanes presents “Resilient Sai Ying Pun”. The exhibition includes work by Magic Lanes, CACHe, Magic Carpet, Stair Culture\/HKSA, i-Discover and Interstitial Hong Kong which considers the past, present and future of this dynamic and historic neighborhood. Please join us for the opening on March 3, 2018, to be held in Shueng Fung Lane! More information about the project can be found on the Magic Lanes Facebook Page<\/a>. \nFebruary 9, 2018 Dr. Louis Lo presented his essay “Always Liminal, Always in Transition: Reading Hong Kong as a Staircase City” at UBC on February 9, 2018. The paper is included in the book Hong Kong Stair Archive<\/i> (forthcoming 2019) along with drawings, photographs and research from the project and essays by Katty Law, Christopher DeWolf, Scott Dietrich and Melissa Cate Christ. Find more information, and a recording of the lecture, here<\/a>. \nFebruary 2, 2018 Melissa was invited to take part in the final review for the City Design HK Workshops at Loupe Hong Kong in PMQ. Thanks to tutor Tarsha Finney, fellow reviewers Calvin Liang and Natalia Ecceverri, and the RCA students for some excellent comparative insights and discussion about podium and other urban development in Hong Kong. January 24, 2018 Thanks to Tarsha Finney, Platon Issaias and the RCA students for the excellent questions and discussion on this “In the know” tour! Also special thanks to Evelyn Kwok for the introduction. October 13, 2017 Melissa presented her ongoing project, the Hong Kong Stair Archive, and thoughts on the future city, on October 13, 2017 in Sydney at the 2017 International Festival of Landscape Architecture. Thanks so much to UNSW and the AILA for the invitation, and to the other speakers and audience for making it an inspiring, engaging, informative, and welcoming event! More information on the Festival here<\/a>. \nOctober 5, 2017 There are two daytime workshops on 5 October. Details are as follows:<\/p>\n (1)\tMocha Snowy Skin Mooncake Workshop (2)\tBamboo Lantern Workshop How to apply: Registrations will be accepted on a first-come-first-served basis. Please contact 28168044, Dicky Ho or Pan Wong.<\/p>\n Magic Lanes is an intergenerational community place-making project to create and sustain a playful, safe, and ecologically rich urban environment which is both culturally and socially inclusive. The project is funded by the Urban Renewal Fund and coordinated by Caritas Mok Cheung Sui Kun Community Centre in collaboration with CUHK with additional support from PolyU, transverse studio and Stair Culture.<\/p>\n September 15, 2017 Thanks to Deland Chan, Kevin Hsu, the Stamford students and the HKDI tutors and students for their thoughtful questions and attention on this very hot day! Come back anytime! March 21, 2017 We are pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, Always at the edge of things and between places \u6c38\u9060\u5728\u908a\u7de3\u6c38\u9060\u5728\u904e\u6e21<\/b>, which pairs archival and design research, photography, and architectural drawings from the project Hong Kong Stair Archive: Documenting the Walkable City<\/i> with multimedia art and design works. The project actively extends the public\u2019s notion of stairs as not only physical objects but also as places where cultural life is situated and explored. The title, borrowed from the poem Images of Hong Kong<\/i> by Leung Ping Kwan, situated the work within a reflection about the past, present and future of Hong Kong\u2019s vernacular, cultural landscape, asking, \u201cWhat is the role of stairs in creating and preserving a walkable, livable city with a vibrant cultural life?\u201d The time-based, socio-cultural works in the exhibition invite the public to participate not only as viewers, but also as catalysts and contributors who can simultaneously reflect upon and build history, while envisioning the future of Hong Kong\u2019s urban landscape. For more information please visit: http:\/\/stairculture.com\/archive\/<\/a> February 20, 2017 Melissa presented an overview of the issues facing the cultural landscape of Site Three of the Central Harbourfront development as part of the panel “General Post Office: A Discussion”. Thanks to moderator Nasrine Seraji and the other panelists and audience members for participating in this important discussion. December 19, 2016 More info on the issue and some great articles free for download (ours is not, but you can buy the issue here<\/a>) can be found on the HDM website<\/a>.<\/p>\n December 16, 2016 Melissa and Benjamin presented their ongoing research project as part of the 10th Annual Pacific Rim Community Design Network conference. Thanks to the organizers and the participants for sharing their research on Resilience and Community Design in Asia and the Pacific Rim! More information on the conference can be found here<\/a>. December 13, 2016 Melissa presented the HKSA project at NUS as part of the 2016 Great Asian Street Symposium. Thanks to all the participants for a thought provoking two days! From the conference abstract: October 26, 2017 Melissa presented the Hong Kong Stair Archive project from a socio-cultural landscape infrastructural perspective at the Landscape Architecture program of the UTS School of Architecture. Thanks very much to Andrew Toland for the invitation. October 11, 2016 Melissa presented the Hong Kong Stair Archive project at Taipei Tech, with a productive and engaging discussion with Louis Lo and colleagues and students from the English and Design Departments. October 07, 2016 Melissa led a walkshop for Walk21, taking a group of excited international walkers (visiting from Sao Paulo, New Zealand, Sweden, USA, Australia and HK) from Wan Chai through Central to Sheung Wan. More information and the route can be found here<\/a>. October 05, 2016 Melissa presented the history, background and current status of the Hong Kong Stair Archive project as part of Walk21 Hong Kong<\/a>, the annual international conference on walking and liveable communities. September 27, 2016 The event will include two short talks on the histories and contexts of the two sites followed by a roundtable discussion. The event is free and open to the public. <\/p>\n Supporting Organisations: Division of Architectural Conservation Programmes (ACP), HKU; Department of Architecture, HKU. September 13, 2016 Melissa presented an overview of her, Daisy Tam and Tomas Holderness’ collaborative project at PolyU’s multidisciplinary RISUD<\/a> conference. From the paper abstract: July 31, 2016 Daisy’s editorial<\/a> \u300c\u770b\u4e0d\u898b\u300d\u7684\u57ce\u5e02\u7ce7\u98df\u5b89\u5168\u5371\u6a5f (roughly translates to [Invisible] Food Security Crisis) touches on issues of food security, poverty and food waste in Hong Kong. She also gave a related talk at the “Future of F&B in Hong Kong”<\/a> networking lecture series at Metta to a packed house of HK’s F&B entrepreneurs. June 27, 2016 At the invitation of Rooftop Republic as part of their educational programming<\/a>, Melissa and Susanne Trumpf of in dialogue<\/a> designed and organized a planter making workshop for secondary school students. Led by Susi, with preparatory work conducted at Maker Bay<\/a>, the 3 hour workshop engaged students in making 50cm x 50cm x 50cm planters from reclaimed pallet wood, gaining valuable hands-on training in the use of power and hand tools, as well as in collaborative group work. The planters will be used at the school as part of their community garden. Drawing Credit: Susanne Trumpf. Photo credits: Rooftop Republic May 20, 2016 Jessica Wei’s article<\/a> includes interviews with Melissa about HK’s stair culture as well as with Google about their recent inclusion of several HK stairs as ‘see inside’ imagery on Google Street View. May 5, 2016 DeWolf<\/a>‘s article “Stair Culture: Digging Into the Past and Present of Hong Kong\u2019s Ladder Streets<\/a>” gives a short overview of the Hong Kong Stair Archive<\/a> project and the importance of stairs to Hong Kong’s history and culture. Thanks Chris for the profile! \nApril 26, 2016 Please join us for a public lecture by visiting researcher Dr. Tomas Holderness entitled “Crowdsourcing the Smart City \u2013 New Methodologies for Participatory Mapping & Civic Co-Management of Urban Environments” in which Dr. Holderness will discuss his recent work at the Open Source Geospatial Lab at the University of Wollongong, including the award winning project PetaJakarta.org<\/a>. This lecture is jointly organized by Melissa Cate Christ<\/a> (School of Design, PolyU), Dr. Daisy Tam<\/a> (Department of Humanities and Creative Writing, HKBU) and Open Data Hong Kong<\/a> and is supported by the General Research Fund HKBU12609215 and HKBU Faculty Research Grant. See the lecture poster pdf here<\/a>.<\/p>\n March 24, 2016 Please join us for what promises to be an engaging event and lively discussion! This event is held in conjunction with the public exhibition, \u201cReimagining Des Voeux Road Central \u6539\u8b8a\u59cb\u65bc\u60f3\u50cf\uff1a\u672a\u4f86\u7684\u5fb7\u8f14\u9053\u4e2d\u201d at the Central Market Oasis Gallery, March 15-28, 2016. http:\/\/dvrc.hk<\/a>. More information on the event and on docomomohk can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n March 7-12, 2016 More information about the conference, the Urban Island Studies journal and the Island Dynamic research group can be found here<\/a>. <\/p>\n January 21, 2016 Melissa was invited by Evelyn Kwok and Chris Gaul from the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney to introduce their students to the HK Stair Archive project and some key HK heritage conservation issues and sites along a route from Shueng Wan to Wan Chai. The studio is an interdisciplinary design subject within the School of Design. It is a collaborative intensive studio that consists of a selection of 30 students from fashion design, product design and visual communication. Thanks to Evelyn and Chris for the invite and to the students for their insightful questions and comments, and for putting up with the rainy chilly weather (and the many stairs!) along this route, specially known by those ‘in the know’. More information about the UTS Global Design Studio program can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n December 15, 2015 December 14, 2015 Melissa was invited to be a guest reviewer at the final studio presentation for the 3rd year of the BA(Hons) in Landscape Architecture program at Thei. Thanks very much to Amy Choy for the invitation to review and comment on her students’ work – it was an interesting and engaging afternoon! December 6-10, 2015 Melissa and Daisy Tam (Hong Kong Baptist University) presented their paper co-written with Tomas Holderness (University of Wollingong), Listening to noise \u2013 people as sensors, enabling ethical food networks at the Agri-food XXII conference.<\/p>\n Paper abstract: November 21, 2016 Melissa has published a short editorial in the Hong Kong magazine Ming Pao Weekly advocating for the need to address food insecurity in Hong Kong. The full text is below or you can read it online (in English) here<\/a>. In Hong Kong, we rely on imports for over 90% of the food which our 7.2m people eat each year, putting the city at a high risk of food unavailability given conditions such as disaster events, climate change, population increase or political and social unrest that can restrict exports to reserve food for local populations, or disrupt supplies from international trading partners. Top importers include China, USA, Brazil and Japan, followed closely by Australia and France. These imports are distributed to over 14,000 food retail outlets, including over 9,000 wet market stalls.<\/p>\n Although two supermarket chains (Welcome and ParknShop, with over 250 outlets each) account for 75% of all supermarket turnover, wet markets continue to play an important role in distribution and sales, but are losing sales to supermarkets, which are up to 54% of total retail sales in 2010 from 44% in 1995. However, considering that Mainland China provides 94% of the fresh pork, 100% of the fresh beef, 92% of vegetables and 66% of eggs consumed in HK, is food at a wet market actually any different than that bought at a supermarket? What choice do consumers really have? Is this reliance on imports and a supermarket duopoly sustainable? How much of that food is wasted along the food chain? How do these situations impact vulnerable populations, such as the 18% of residents who live below the poverty line? Can a focus on local production, food waste reduction, and food sovereignty, which is defined as \u201cthe right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems\u201d (La Via Campesina, 1996), address these questions and increase food security in Hong Kong?<\/p>\n Although well established in the USA and Europe, support of local, organic food as a means to a self-sustaining, secure food supply, is relatively new in HK, given the statement in the December 2014 consultation document, \u201cNew Agricultural Policy: Sustainable Agricultural Development in HK\u201d, that local agriculture is not a means of primary production. However, farmers and consumers are increasingly interested in locally produced, organic food either for direct purchase onsite, through farmer\u2019s markets, in restaurants or through modified CSA programs such as Homegrown Foods. But with a total of only 2400 farms (540 classified as organic as of June 2015) on 700 hectares, 3800 hectares considered abandoned farmland and no accounting for the production of rooftop farms, local production was calculated as only 1.9% of fresh vegetables, 79.6% of live poultry and 6.1% of live pigs in 2014.<\/p>\n The Fall 2014 speech by Secretary for Food & Health Dr Ko Wing-man acknowledged that \u201cHK shares APEC\u2019s goal of strengthening food security and fighting against the volatility of food prices\u201d, however increasing the amount of local production was barely mentioned in the consultation document. It focused instead on a matching fund, establishing AgriParks and promoting local agriculture, not with targets for production increase (since a focus on quantity, rather than quality, would go against free market principles), but as a leisure activity that can provide employment and high quality, but low quantities of specialty foods through new technologies. This proposed focus does not acknowledge the potential risk of food unavailability and utilization due to the HK\u2019s reliance on imports, especially from Mainland China, with its food safety issues, lack of hygiene standard enforcement, illegal and harmful food additives and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These issues not only affect the food we eat but also impact the soil, air and water through agricultural run-off and air pollution from chemical manufacturing processes. Add to this cultural practices and inefficiencies in the food chain that lead to 3,337 tonnes\/day of food being wasted (EPD, 2012) and ending up incinerated or in landfills, it becomes apparent that the current model of food supply in HK is not sustainable. It is time to support a food sovereignty approach, in combination with local production and food waste reduction, to increase food security in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n October 6, 2015 Melissa was invited by Daisy Tam to present her paper on urban agriculture and food security in Singapore to undergraduate students from Baptist University. The course also includes hands-on gardening and site visits to Hong Kong organic farms.<\/p>\n July 4, 2015 As part of the Asia Art Archive’s Open Saturday, transverse studio is working with the Pound Lane Concern Group<\/a> and Taipingshan Community Storytelling<\/a> to produce Taipingshan Secrets: A self-guided scavenger hunt and tour. We are providing participants with a Cantonese\/English map with a series of clues to discover special or secret parts of the neighbourhood. Pick up our special edition map at the AAA library to discover some of the hidden secrets of Taipingshan, and find out about more of the events occurring on Open Saturday here<\/a>. May 3, 2015 Our MapPokfulam project has been featured on the most recent episode of the TVB program Sunday Report. The program focuses on three community \/ grassroots mapping projects in Hong Kong and includes an interview with Melissa and Benjamin Sin. See the program here<\/a>. March 29, 2015 Melissa has published a short editorial in the Hong Kong magazine Ming Pao weekly advocating for the implementation of Car-free Sundays in Hong Kong. The full text is below or you can read it online (in English) here<\/a>. Also see Yanni Chan’s piece for Hong Kong Magazine “Yes. We Can Have a Walkable Central”<\/a> for a more in-depth look at the issue. Can we reoccupy and redesign Hong Kong\u2019s streets to prioritize people over vehicles? It seems we can. For, as demonstrated by the transformation of key vehicular streets into dynamic pedestrian environments during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong\u2019s urban landscape has the capacity to provide for the needs of a large number of people, from the essential to the environmental to the socio-political. Beyond evaluating the success or failure of the Movement\u2019s political demand for \u2018true universal suffrage\u2019, the occupation reinvigorated a cultural awareness regarding Hong Kong\u2019s perpetual spatial inequality and degraded living environment. The Umbrella Movement created a community, composed not just of those who support social and political equality, but also of those who support spatial equality and the possibility of prioritizing people over vehicles as a way to co-create a more liveable and sustainable city. The Movement\u2019s tactical and nuanced occupation and traversal of spaces previously (and now, again) devoted to cars or restricted by rules and regulations to single uses can be seen as a provocative starting point to imagine strategies and tactics for the reprogramming of Hong Kong\u2019s streets. One of those tactics is the re-implementation of car-free stretches of street or highway according to an internationally widespread practice, Car-free Sundays.<\/p>\n The benefits of \u2018car-free\u2019 days in Hong Kong have already been proven. Blockading the streets during the Umbrella Movement was a tactic to force negotiation, but it also improved the environment in Hong Kong. Roadside pollution levels dropped over 40% during the protests according to the Clean Air Network, noise levels were significantly lowered and the closed streets became wide communal public spaces \u2013 giant sidewalks and plazas that accommodated every kind of pedestrian activity, from walking to skateboarding to eating to studying to sleeping. In addition to the environmental and social benefits, in Admiralty in particular, the ability to cross at grade and to walk or bike from Central to Causeway Bay, opened up a whole new logistical landscape and way to travel through the city which is faster, and more encouraging of a healthy, active lifestyle than the MTR, tram, bus, taxi or private vehicle.<\/p>\n Can Hong Kong design its urban landscape to transform itself into a livable, healthy, walkable city? After this experiment in which a highway became a boulevard, and acknowledging the environmental and social benefits of pedestrianization, can we keep the momentum going to eventually transform Hong Kong\u2019s streets and highways into \u2018complete streets\u2019, where safe access for all users is emphasized, where people are given priority over vehicles? In this future city, sidewalks are wider, fences are removed, crosswalks and signaled intersections are installed, roads are narrower, speed limits are lowered and space is made for benches, vegetation and chatting? All these are possible \u2013 if we can imagine Connaught or Nathan Road as a pleasant place to walk, other main thoroughfares (such as Caine or Garden Road on Hong Kong Island for a start) could be next.<\/p>\n So to further test the viability of reducing traffic and to increase residents demand for a safe and healthy urban environment in Hong Kong, why not establish car-free Sundays? A weekly event would show Hong Kong\u2019s commitment to improving the living environment of the city.Hong Kong\u2019s public transit network is world famous for its investment model and efficiency, but in order to take the next step towards a sustainable future by reducing the speed, number and trips made by vehicles in the city, including buses, taxis and minibuses, people need to be able to walk, cycle and take other forms of non-motorized transport. Why not repeat every week what has already been shown during the Umbrella Movement: people want to walk from Central to Causeway Bay and that the cessation of vehicular traffic on those barricaded roads significantly improved air quality and significantly reduced noise pollution.<\/p>\n There are precedents around the world for Car-free Sundays, including Jakarta, Seattle, San Francisco and Bogota. Hong Kong would have a number of models to choose from, some of which have led to the conversion of highways into boulevards and the implementation of permanent improvements which lowered speed limits and improved safety and air quality. In others, the closed or reduced streets act as temporary public spaces for festivals and gatherings, cafes, theatres or just chill-out spaces to meet and greet friends and family. With car-free Sundays, the people of Hong Kong would have the opportunity to connect with their neighbors and walk, bike, scoot, rollerblade, stroll, or dance in a pollution-free, spatially equitable environment. Occupying these spaces with people, rather than vehicles, is the first step towards making Hong Kong a truly equitable and liveable city. Its time for Car-free Sundays in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n March 28, 2015 This paper outlines several case studies in which debates over both the physical ground of Hong Kong and the grounds of its governance and development have emerged from specific sites of collision. By exposing the slow violence (Nixon 2011) often occasioned by the confluence of the \u2018one China, two systems\u2019 policy and the global and local economy, these collisions, and the exceptions that they engender, are crucial to the creation of a culturally robust urban landscape, as well as a socially and environmentally just future city. The paper situates Hong Kong in a regional and global discourse about the potential of local practices to resist and\/or adapt to contextually determined policies to advocate for a more inclusive and democratic society.<\/i><\/p>\n March 26, 2015 Melissa will be presenting her work on a discussion panel with Frances Whitehead and Jane Hutton moderated by Ellen Grimes on Art, Design and Activism in Contemporary Landscape. More information about the speakers and the school can be found here<\/a>. \nMarch 12-23, 2015 As part of the Hong Kong portion of the Aging Dragons exhibition, Melissa will exhibit work from her Stair Culture project. For more information on the symposium, check out their Facebook page.<\/a> More information on the exhibition can be found here<\/a> and the exhibition catalogue can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n From the “Hong Kong: The Ever-growing City” team abstract: The following contributions exhibit the unique development modes of Hong Kong. They aim to find critical positions towards the actors in play, and raising conflicts between ever-growth and aspects of heritage preservation and urban renewal, environment and density, government policies and market forces, housing distribution and land ownership, hyper efficiency and public realm.<\/i><\/p>\n New Territories<\/i> The Boring City I: Inge Goudsmit and Adrienne Simons Mong Kok<\/i> The Boring City II: Inge Goudsmit and Adrienne Simons Resistance and Inner-growth: Christiane Lange Stair Culture: Sustaining a livable Hong Kong: Melissa Cate Christ Hipsterfication: Roberto Requejo March 8, 2015 The “MapPokfulam” Project develops a online platform for information exchange to facilitate the safety of residents and villagers in the case of an emergency. The first step of this process was mapping the village using the free and open source mapping platform Open Street Map. Please join us for a demonstration and testing of how to make a report using the Ushahidi platform and give your feedback as to the utility of the system and what else needs to be included in the map and the system itself. Check out the prototype at http:\/\/map.pokfulamvillage.com\/<\/a> February 8, 2015 The “MapPokfulam” project develops a online platform for information exchange to facilitate the safety of villagers in the case of an emergency. The first step of this process is mapping the village using the free and open source mapping platform Open Street Map. Please join us for the first community workshop to learn how to take and upload tracings in OSM, as well add key features and points and edit the online map. January 31, 2015 Melissa will be moderating the first panel “Reevaluating Conservation in the 21st Century” of the symposium “Future of the Past”, which has been organized by docomomo HK. Speakers on the first panel include:<\/p>\n – Hoyin Lee, Associate Professor, Architectural Conservation Programmes, University of Hong Kong For more information and a complete list of speakers and their presentation abstracts visit docomomo.hk<\/a><\/p>\n \nDecember 2014 December 11-13, 2014 December 4-5, 2014 Organized and moderated by: Melissa Cate Christ, transverse studio<\/a> \/ Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Daisy Dic Sze Tam, Hong Kong Baptist University<\/a> with Mart van de Ven, Open Data Hong Kong and Joyce Chan, Chief Operations Officier, Foodlink Foundation<\/a> as part of CeDEM Asia<\/a>, Create Media Centre, CityU, Hong Kong<\/p>\n \nThe food system in Hong Kong has shown itself to be inequitable: everyday, we throw away over 3300 tonnes of food while 1.5 million people go to bed hungry. The question of what to do about surplus food, hunger and waste is an ethical issue that has direct impact on the environment, urban health and social justice. Current efforts that address this issue through tackling food waste are undertaken by different sectors of society which have established separate spheres of information, knowledge, resources, networks, and relationships, thus limiting the potential for local or global change. This micro case study is indicative of the larger framework of city planning and the management of resources.<\/p>\n This workshop aims to reconnect these spheres by situating surplus food as a practice of the commons. What would the food system look like if the recovery, distribution and consumption of surplus food (also understood as food waste) are no longer proprietary practices, but one of collective action? By bringing together community organizers, NGOs, technical experts and researchers, this discussion panel workshop takes food recovery as the empirical case study to explore dimensions of the practice of the commons.<\/p>\n Open data practices, social media and technological platforms offer a way that such efforts can be consolidated, but practical and pragmatic concerns need to be detailed and articulated in order to make it a workable, usable, open source portal. Examples of current problems and concerns include: 1) logistical organizations of food rescue operations and their data collection tools vary wildly \u2013 how could a tool be designed so that it does not create more work for NGOs and allows them to benefit directly from it? 2) Food donation practices are to be commended, but in reality most donors do not wish to be exposed, shifting the pressure onto NGOs. This \u201caccountability\u201d culture creates an atmosphere that is not conducive to sharing, especially without policy changes such as the implementation of a Good Samaritan Law. 3) Once the data sets have been collected, current practices rely heavily upon volunteers to enter\/scrape\/parse the data in order to make it usable (since the culture of collecting data does not have sharing in mind). This workshop welcomes community organizers and NGOs who are in need of better tools and methods to collect, distribute or reduce surplus food; technical experts working to improve open data practices and\/or on open source software development; and funding bodies and government agencies who can support and enable the development of these tools and practices. Please join us for what promises to be a lively discussion about the role of open data, citizen participation and social media in enabling ethical food systems.<\/p>\n Conference proceedings can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nDecember 2-3, 2014 For more information on the Pokfulam Village studio see here<\/a>. More information on the conference theme and other speakers can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n October 7 – 9, 2014 Paper abstract: To engage in this conversation, landscape architecture students from the University of Hong Kong took part in a design research-based travel studio in the Spring of 2014. This paper presents the resultant student and faculty design research and asks how the challenges facing this working port and logistics zone can function as a lens to understand the environmental, social, and infrastructural challenges impacting the city and region.<\/i><\/p>\n August 30 – September 5, 2014 I was selected to take part in Designing places of emancipation?<\/i>, an interdisciplinary intensive summer school workshop which was organized by The Interdisciplinary Centre for Urban Culture and Public Space (SKuOR) in cooperation with the Centre of Local Planning (IFOER) at the Department of Spatial Planning, Faculty of Architecture and Planning of Vienna University of Technology (TUWien) where the aim was “to understand and change the social world through participation, action and research in public space.” Learning Fields Find out more about the TUWien SKuOR Summer School here<\/a> and on Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n July 18, 2014 July 16, 2014 July 15, 2014 WIDEOPEN: Call for Calls THEMES: . PROPHECY (Tourette #1) July 15, 2014 I have been funded to attend and present a paper at this conference on heritage politics in Taipei in December 2014. From the CFP: July 1, 2014 June 26, 2014 In Evidence of Action: Towards an Ecology of Objects<\/i>, I discuss the importance of a close examination and documentation of the vernacular as fundamental to a landscape pedagogy which emphasizes learning from local conditions as essential to design solutions which can adapt a typical assembly to a specific environmental condition. The paper draws from student work developed in the project Hong Kong Detail Catalogue<\/a> in the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. Download the paper here<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nMay 17, 2014 Essential for this work is developing a better understanding of how new open source software (OSS) and open data management tools can respond to community-led activities; such a dialogue must happen in both directions to allow the technical advancement to keep pace with community action and to allow community organizers to benefit from new OSS tools. During the Open Source Cities session, we will examine new methods of OSS development as means for community transformation, preservation, and resistance in an era of relentless urban \u201crenewal\u201d and development.<\/p>\n We welcome three \u201ctypes\u201d of participants: community organizers and planners in need of better mapping tools; technical experts working on open source software development; funding bodies and government agencies who can support the development of these tools. We are excited to develop this conversation as part of the Open Platform programme of the Asia Art Archive.<\/p>\n Participants include: A PDF flyer for the panel discussion can be found here<\/a>. May 10, 2014 Daisy Tam and I will be presenting our idea for an open source application to track food waste, FoodConnectHK<\/i>, at the Open Data Hong Kong hackathon Make 3.0:Data with purpose. FoodConnectHK intends to make information about food waste available for food banks, NGOs and individuals in Hong Kong based on a platform for crowdsourcing logistics. Everyday, Hong Kong throws away 32 000 tonnes of food (that\u2019s equivalent to 120 double decker buses) and at the same time, more than 1.5 million people go to bed hungry. We want to enable the recuperation and redirection of this waste to food banks and charities that can feed the people in need. The project will start with a pilot application which identifies where waste occurs along the supply chains and distribution outlets and will provide a location based, real time platform where this information can be made available. The project is ongoing – get in touch if you are interested in participating as a researcher, developer or data journalist!<\/p>\n For info on Make 3.0 here<\/a> and on our project here<\/a>.<\/p>\n March 29-30, 2014 Melissa has been invited to exhibit photos from the ‘Floating in Hong Kong’ series at the event ‘On Air’<\/a> in Taipingshan. See the Facebook event page<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n Artwork statement: This series presents a new way of seeing Taipingshan, familiar yet disorienting. Taken with a camera shooting continuously while attached to a weather balloon, the accidental and somewhat precarious perspectives flatten and convolute, but also reinforce, our typical understanding of Hong Kong’s densely layered urban environment. Simultaneously focusing on the neighborhood’s plentiful and often underused roofs and on the crevasses separating the towers, the images reveal the complex overlay of environmental, cultural and social conditions in Taipingshan. The lack of direct sunlight on a north-facing slope crammed tightly with high rise buildings, the visual and physical relief of trees and open spaces, people negotiating the city\u2019s complex network of pedestrian pathways – the photos ask us to consider the duality of living both on the ground and in the air. Excerpted from the organizers website: March 27, 2014 Organizer & Chair:\tMelissa Cate Christ Panel abstract: Prior to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China by the British, there was great \u201cuncertainty as to what might disappear as Hong Kong \u2018entered the Chinese fold\u201d . However, in the past 15 years, rather than evidencing a radical or even a gradual cultural disappearance, Hong Kong residents have been reclaiming public space and its necessary operations as a way to resist the hegemonic policies of the HKSAR. This spatial occupation can be understood as a way for residents to assert their rights to the city through everyday or temporary practices and protests, but also through the identification of physical and cultural constructs that have come to define and signify their urban environments. <\/p>\n This panel is composed of four papers which present contemporary examples of literal and symbolic spatial occupation in Hong Kong and its effects on the construction of social, political and cultural identities in post-colonial, pre-2047 HKSAR. From examinations of migrant workers and their positive parasitic ecology; to hawkers and their provision of alternative food sources for the poor; to local resistance to global, Hong Kong and Mainland political economic policies; to community groups calling for cultural landscape characteristics to supersede top down planning initiatives, the panel presents a range of alternative strategies of spatial occupation which resist the neoliberal trajectories often applauded as the predefined path of a future Hong Kong. <\/i><\/p>\n For a complete description of the panel and paper abstracts, see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n February 21, 2014 ABSTRACT: February 14, 2014 January 25 & 26, 2014 \t\t\t\t\t(1 of 1)<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n \nFrom the project’s Press Release: Pokfulam Village is one of the oldest villages in Hong Kong, dating back to the 1730s. It has gone through several transformations: from a simple agricultural community; to a local commercial centre in the 1950s; to a densely populated low-rise community surrounded by high-rise housing projects. Despite these changes, local traditions are still central to village life. For example, during Mid-Autumn Festival, a locally crafted Fire Dragon is paraded around Aberdeen and Pokfulam Village to pray for good health and fortune. However, many people in Hong Kong do not know about the traditional culture of the village and wrongly believe it is an informal settlement.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to the regulations of the 1982 squatter control policy enacted and enforced by the HK Government, many homes in Pokfulam Village are restricted in their use of material and the size of their structure so that no changes can be made to the physical materials of the structure even they deteriorate. The limited and low cost material palette of some of the village homes built in 1940s and 1980s, but whose materiality is fixed by the Policy, creates the illusion that Pokfulam Village is an urban slum\u201d, said Mr. Allan Siu, core member of the Pokfulam Village Landscape Conservation.<\/p>\n Interested in the complex environmental and cultural conditions present in the village, Cate Christ and Denizen sited their HKU design studio in the village, asking students to document and propose landscape interventions in the village. This engagement in the village led Cate Christ to apply for the \u2018We Are With You Project\u2019 (WAY Project) Fund with Mary Ho in order to fund the grassroots initiative to paint the roofs. Working with a group of HKU Landscape Architecture students and in consultation with the villagers, they mapped out which roofs could be painted, and designed a plan and colour palette based on site and visual research.<\/p>\n \u201cThis weekend is only the beginning of the project. HKU students are only painting one quarter of the rooftops designated for painting by the design. We hope the initiative we have started will encourage other villagers to paint their rooftops and bring out the vibrancy of the village. Working closely with HKU faculty teachers and students in building a sustainable community, we hope to integrate urban heritage values into a wider framework of city development. This is also one of the recommendations in UNESCO\u2019s Historic Urban Landscape, and we hope Pokfulam Village will be Hong Kong\u2019s shining example\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Being a neighbour of Pokfulam Village, our University formed a partnership with Caritas Pokfulam Community Development Project to foster positive community capacity building in the village. Our students thus have the opportunity to discover the value of intentional communities, to develop habits of reflection and in reconciling people of different backgrounds and social groups, and also to demonstrate an understanding of sustainable community and heritage development in Hong Kong\u201d, said Mary Ho of the HKU Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Centre. <\/i><\/p>\n The WAY Project is a four-year community-based social capital development project in the Southern District. Its objective is to develop a replicable model for social capital development, particularly with the involvement of staff and students of HKU. <\/p>\n The HKU student organization Residental Colleges Taking Action for NGOs (RC TANGO<\/a>) made a video<\/a> of the roof painting weekend which has several interviews and gives a nice perspective on the density and community spirit within the village.<\/p>\n December 30-31, 2013 As part of the site and research phase of the Pokfulam Village rooftop painting design project, BALS3 RAs spent two days creating a high resolution composite photograph of Pokfulam Village using grassroots mapping techniques – a 1.5m diameter weather balloon! Here are a few of the 10K shots they captured in 5 balloon launches from various parts of the village. \nDecember 20, 2013 Installation collaborators: Pokfulam Village Cultural Landscape Conservation Group, the Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Centre, and the HKU Division of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture (Melissa Cate Christ, Seth Denizen and BALS3 LADiv students) From the installation’s descriptive text (by Benjamin Sin, Caritas): A large number of immigrants from China took up residence in Pokfulam Village in the 1950’s, joining the existing population of indigenous residents. At that time, decent building materials were not available for constructing proper shelters, leading to the construction of so called ‘squatter’ housing. Some common materials were used which are prone to decay and damage, forcing residents to repair their houses frequently. Some homes were even in danger of collapse or fire, threatening the safety of inhabitants. <\/p>\n Intending to prohibit the transformation of squatter houses into permanent structures, the 1982 Squatter Control Policy requires that every squatter house be renovated with only the building materials which were registered in the 1982 Government, referred to above in the quote from Carrie Lam. This policy has discouraged residents from improving their homes, e.g. to provide a more solid structure, better heat insulation or a brighter appearance, as any violation of the Policy will lead to forced demolition. Deprived from improving their standard of living as other Hong Kongers have been able to do, and threatened with the loss of their only shelter, the inhabitants of the village could not help but retain the settlement\u2019s dilapidated appearance, sometimes seen as an eyesore to the villages\u2019s middle-class neighbours, who are unaware of the requirements of the Policy. Other Hong Kong people who share the same fate as Pokfulam Village have also requested the government to reassess and review the Policy accordingly, but so far there has been no progress or success in updating the Policy.<\/p>\n No one is willing to stand prolonged oppression, especially those who are embedded in an environment with rich historical, cultural and social capital. The Pokfulamers lead their reform from within their homes. They build brick walls to ensure a safe and secure home, while leaving the outside appearance untouched. The metal and wooden plates (on view to your left), understood as the masking layers, symbolize the absurdity of the Squatter Control Policy. <\/p>\n \u8584\u6276\u6797\u6751\u7372\u4e16\u754c\u6587\u7269\u5efa\u7bc9\u57fa\u91d1\u6703\u5217\u5165\u5176\u76e3\u5bdf\u540d\u55ae\uff0c\u559a\u8d77\u570b\u969b\u793e\u6703\u7684\u95dc\u6ce8\u3002\u7acb\u6751\u4e8c\u767e\u591a\u5e74\uff0c\u6642\u81f3\u4eca\u65e5\u539f\u5c45\u6c11\u4ecd\u5728\u6751\u5167\u7e41\u884d\uff0c\u4fdd\u6709\u5730\u9053\u50b3\u7d71\u98a8\u4fd7\uff0c\u9130\u91cc\u9593\u5145\u6eff\u4eba\u60c5\u5473\u3002\u4e0a\u4e16\u7d00\u4e94\u5341\u5e74\u4ee3\u8d77\uff0c\u5927\u91cf\u5167\u5730\u96e3\u6c11\u6e67\u5165\uff0c\u5728\u8001\u6751\u5167\u5916\u642d\u5efa\u7c21\u964b\u5c4b\u820d\uff0c\u8271\u96e3\u74b0\u5883\u4e0b\u5efa\u7acb\u8d77\u751f\u5b58\u7a7a\u9593\uff0c\u4e26\u9010\u6f38\u8207\u539f\u5c45\u6c11\u5f62\u6210\u5171\u751f\u793e\u7fa4\uff0c\u6709\u6a5f\u71df\u9020\u5171\u6709\u751f\u6d3b\u6587\u5316\u3002\u6b64\u6b21\u53c3\u5c55\uff0c\u671f\u671b\u89c0\u773e\u770b\u5230\u5bee\u5c4b\u653f\u7b56\u7ba1\u5236\u4e0b\uff0c\u8584\u6276\u6797\u6751\u4ecd\u4fdd\u6709\u7684\u591a\u5143\u751f\u6d3b\u7a7a\u9593\u3002<\/p>\n \u5bee\u5c4b\u7ba1\u5236\u653f\u7b56<\/b> \u4e94\u5341\u5e74\u4ee3\uff0c\u5927\u6279\u96e3\u6c11\u5f9e\u4e2d\u570b\u6e67\u5165\u8584\u6276\u6797\u6751\uff0c\u8207\u571f\u751f\u571f\u9577\u7684\u6751\u6c11\u4e00\u540c\u751f\u6d3b\u3002\u7531\u65bc\u7576\u5e74\u7269\u8cea\u8ca7\u4e4f\uff0c\u4ed6\u5011\u7947\u80fd\u7528\u6700\u666e\u901a\u7684\u7269\u6599\u5efa\u9020\u5c45\u6240\u3002\u9019\u4e9b\u7269\u6599\u5f88\u5feb\u5c31\u92b9\u8755\u8150\u721b\uff0c\u8feb\u5f97\u5c4b\u4e3b\u4e0d\u6642\u8981\u7dad\u4fee\u3002\u5728\u5927\u81ea\u7136\u7684\u8003\u9a57\u4e0b\uff0c\u4ea6\u96a8\u6642\u7d93\u4e0d\u8d77\u98a8\u5439\u96e8\u6253\u800c\u5012\u584c\uff0c\u6216\u88ab\u706b\u820c\u6240\u541e\u566c\uff01<\/p>\n \u5948\u4f55\uff0c\u653f\u5e9c\u70ba\u4e86\u4e0d\u8b93\u9019\u4e9b\u5bee\u5c4b\u8f49\u5316\u6210\u6c38\u4e45\u7d50\u69cb\uff0c\u898f\u5b9a\u5bee\u5c4b\u5982\u8981\u6574\u4fee\uff0c\u7947\u80fd\u5920\u6cbf\u7528\u6839\u64da1982\u5e74\u5bee\u5c4b\u767b\u8a18\u6642\uff0c\u5efa\u9020\u8a72\u5c4b\u820d\u7684\u7269\u6599\u3002\u9019\u4e00\u9ede\u9650\u5236\u4e86\u5c45\u6c11\u6539\u5584\u5176\u5bb6\u5c45\u74b0\u5883\u7684\u610f\u9858\uff1a\u5982\u4ee4\u5bb6\u5c45\u8b8a\u5f97\u66f4\u7a69\u56fa\u3001\u9694\u71b1\u3001\u53ca\u5916\u89c0\u66f4\u5149\u9bae\u3002\u8ab0\u82e5\u4e0d\u4f9d\u5f9e\u653f\u7b56\u90fd\u6703\u88ab\u52d2\u4ee4\u62c6\u9077\u3002\u53d7\u8457\u5bee\u5c4b\u653f\u7b56\u7684\u5a01\u8105\uff0c\u6015\u6703\u5931\u53bb\u552f\u4e00\u7684\u68f2\u8eab\u4e4b\u6240\u3002\u4ed6\u5011\u4e0d\u50cf\u5176\u4ed6\u9999\u6e2f\u4eba\uff0c\u4ed6\u5011\u88ab\u525d\u596a\u4e86\u6539\u5584\u751f\u6d3b\u74b0\u5883\u7684\u81ea\u7531\uff0c\u7947\u80fd\u7121\u5948\u5730\u7dad\u6301\u5c45\u6240\u7684\u7834\u721b\u5916\u89c0\u3002\u4e0d\u660e\u6240\u4ee5\u7684\u4e2d\u7522\u9130\u5c45\uff0c\u6709\u6642\u9084\u6703\u602a\u8cac\u4ed6\u5011\uff0c\u89ba\u5f97\u4ed6\u5011\u7919\u773c\u3002\u5728\u9999\u6e2f\u5176\u5b83\u5730\u5340\uff0c\u6709\u8457\u76f8\u540c\u547d\u904b\u7684\u4eba\uff0c\u66fe\u8981\u6c42\u653f\u5e9c\u5168\u9762\u5be9\u8996\u73fe\u6cc1\uff0c\u5c0d\u653f\u7b56\u4f5c\u51fa\u76f8\u61c9\u6aa2\u8a0e\uff0c\u4f46\u90fd\u5f97\u4e0d\u5230\u6b63\u9762\u56de\u61c9\u3002<\/p>\n \u6c92\u6709\u4eba\u9858\u610f\u9577\u671f\u88ab\u58d3\u5236\u3002\u5c24\u5176\u662f\u90a3\u4e9b\u66fe\u6d78\u6deb\u5728\u8c50\u5bcc\u6b77\u53f2\u3001\u6587\u5316\u3001\u793e\u6703\u5e95\u860a\u7684\u4eba\u3002\u8584\u6276\u6797\u6751\u4eba\u5e36\u52d5\u5f9e\u5c4b\u5167\u9032\u884c\u7684\u8b8a\u9769\uff1a\u4ed6\u5011\u7528\u7d05\u78da\u5efa\u8d77\u4e00\u500b\u66f4\u5805\u56fa\u5b89\u5168\u7684\u5c45\u6240\uff0c\u800c\u5916\u5c64\u92ea\u56de\u539f\u4f86\u7684\u9435\u76ae\u6728\u677f\u3002\u660e\u773c\u4eba\u4e00\u770b\u5c31\u77e5\u9053\u90a3\u662f\u4e00\u5c64\u63a9\u98fe\u3002\u9019\u73fe\u8c61\u5c31\u5982\u540c\u628a\u8352\u8b2c\u7684\u5bee\u5c4b\u7ba1\u5236\u653f\u7b56\u7f6e\u65bc\u805a\u5149\u71c8\u4e0b\uff0c\u4f9b\u793e\u6703\u5927\u773e\u4e00\u8d77\u53bb\u5be9\u8996\uff01\u00ac<\/p>\n \nDecember 7, 2013 November 27, 2013 EXCESS: Consuming Hong Kong \/ Scapegoat Launch In a discussion moderated by Hammad Nasar of the Asia Art Archive, Scapegoat editor Etienne Turpin will present the concept \u201cexcess\u201d — the theme of Issue 05 — as a lens which we can use to observe and assess relations of confinement and consumption, and as a provocation to intervene in these processes through activism, design, and other public platforms. Scapegoat contributors Seth Denizen and Melissa Cate Christ will then discuss, respectively, the shopping mall as a model for the therapeutic transformation of the subject, and the extreme environmental and social effects of our out-of-season desire for imported vegetables on the landscape of Almeria, Spain. These presentations will be followed by a conversation with the audience about the reciprocal relations between architecture and its adjacencies, the rise of cultural tourism, and the role of independent counter-practices in the context of Hong Kong. With this presentation and discussion, we hope the launch of Scapegoat 05 will provoke further conversations about expenditure, consumption culture, and cultural politics.<\/p>\n From the editorial board: From the issue introduction: Melissa Cate Christ is an Asst. Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong and director of transverse studio. November 23, 2013 In a discussion moderated by Daan Roggeveen and Xiaoyu Weng, Scapegoat editor Etienne Turpin will present the project of \u201cExcess\u201d as a means to better examine the past and present of urban-rural assemblages. Journal contributors Seth Denizen and Melissa Cate Christ will discuss, respectively, the therapeutic role of the pastoral in the psychosocial history of American urbanism, and the explosive growth of the garden as factory in Spain\u2019s miracle economy. These presentations will be followed by a further discussion of China\u2019s rural growth and its implications for designers and planners. If, as Peter Sloterdijk has suggested, the planet of terrestrial globalization has itself become a world interior of capital, we must examine how this global transition has entangled America, Europe, and Asia in a hyper-productive paradox of perpetual growth and the attendant crises of resource depletion, biodiversity loss, and megacity pollution. With this presentation and discussion, we hope our launch of Scapegoat Issue 05 will provoke conversations about excess, expenditure, and this architecture without exteriority.<\/p>\n Participants See a video of the discussion here<\/a>.<\/p>\n November 22, 2013 \nNovember 10, 2013 Join us for a community workshop to create a more accessible village! <\/p>\n This event is part of the Historical Settlement Festival, is organized and led by students from the HKU Division of Landscape Architecture and is supported by the Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Fund and the Division of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, HKU. www.ad.arch.hku.hk\/arch2043<\/a> pflvstudio@gmail.com October 5, 2013
\nAccording to the Committee for Sydney: \u2018The Sydney Summit sets the agenda for the future of our city, and this year\u2019s theme is The Bold City – about turning visionary ideas into practical action, leadership that balances ambition with pragmatism and a willingness to make the decisions that shape the future of Sydney. The selected Big Ideas encompass what it means to be a bold city.\u2019<\/p>\n
\nLAND7313 Capstone 2 Masters Studio Final Review<\/b>
\nAnita B. Lawrence Centre, Room 6007, UNSW Sydney
\nConvenor: Melissa Cate Christ
\nTutor: Simon Lloyd<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_IMG_5830-Large_1280.jpeg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_IMG_5842-2-Large_1280.jpeg\")
\nTop: MLA student Dylan Bai, Associate Lecturer Simon Lloyd and Roger Jasprizza, Associate Director, OCULUS
\nBottom: 2025 LAND7313 Capstone 2 studio cohort!<\/p>\n
\n2025 AILA NSW Awards announced<\/b><\/p>\n
\nGetting Political in the Neoliberal City: Planning and Design for Social and Environmental Justice<\/b>
\nEditors: Burcu Yigit Turan, Melissa Cate Christ and Cristina Cerulli
\nLondon: Routledge<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_91HPj0xe-6L._SL1500_cover-image_1061.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
\nLAND2311 Studio 5: Landscape Planning and Systems <\/b>
\nUNSW Landscape Architecture UG Studio, Year 3
\nYear Coordinator: Chistina Silk
\nConvenor: Melissa Cate Christ<\/p>\n
\nThe students were asked to prepare a landscape structure plan (LSP) which represents a future scenario for a site which is set in a context of multiple layers of overlapping and intersecting landscape systems, policies, and plans. Their first Assessment task allowed them to develop a deeper critical understanding of the large-scale context and issues facing SW Sydney through the lens of Country and in relation to climate action, environmental sustainability and social equity. In the second assessment task, the students researched, mapped and analysed the landscape systems and topics explored in Assessment 01 at the scale of our site in Camden, and mapped out the opportunities and constraints that emerged from their analysis. The final assessment drew from their research, analysis and synthesis to develop a landscape structure plan (LSP) for the site as it transforms to a denser human settlement over the next 20-30 years. Their final work proposed scenarios for the structure of the future landscape of the site in light of the issues, opportunities and constraints they identified, and included set of landscape-led goals and strategies which would support the performance of ecosystem services and guide your LSP, which were illustrated and supported through maps, drawings and text.<\/I><\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2025-07-17-at-15.22.10_1278.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2025-07-17-at-15.22.25_1383.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2025-07-17-at-15.22.40_1156.png\")
\nTop: Mi Huynh; Middle: Rhea Sanjay; Bottom: Bride Mahar.<\/p>\n
\nAgency of Landscape: 2025<\/b>
\nPublic Seminar
\nSchool of Architecture, Chinese University of Hong Kong<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_PHOTO-2025-02-21-23-25-21_1600.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_PHOTO-2025-02-21-23-25-21-3_1600.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nAILA NSW 2025 Awards Jury Member<\/b>
\nAutumn 2025<\/p>\n
\nBank Naturalisation Officer appointment<\/b>
\nParramatta River Catchment Group<\/p>\n
\nSidewalk Stories<\/b>
\nMelissa Cate Christ and Tom Oliver Payne
\nKerb 32: Unsaid<\/I><\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2025-07-16-at-22.02.37_674.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nwalking design\/designing walks: revealing water stories as paths to regenerative urban landscapes<\/b>
\nECLAS Conference 2024, 7-10 September
\nBrussels, Belgium<\/p>\n
\nPlace Strategist appointment<\/b>
\nHoyne<\/p>\n
\nStairs as public places: investigation, collaboration, and celebration along Sheung Fung Lane, Hong Kong<\/b>
\nOnline: 11:30-13:30 Seoul time
\nHanyang University, Graduate School of Urban Studies, Seoul<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Magic-lanes_collaborate-photos_2312.jpg\")
Photo credit: Magic Lanes project.<\/p>\n
\nFill<\/i> wins first prize at Eden Unearthed 2023<\/b>
\nNovember 2023- April 2024
\nCurated by Meredith Kirton
\nEden Gardens, Macquarie Park, NSW <\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2023-12-05-at-13.08.21_794.png\")
\nAbove: Some images from the project Instagram page<\/a>; Below: Installation concept and ideas for getting involved!<\/p>\n
\nv.tr. To put into (a container, e.g.) as much as can be held.
\nn. An amount needed to make full, complete, or satisfied.<\/i><\/p>\n
\n1)\tMove some stones!<\/b>
\nRakes, shovels, and buckets are available for you to contribute to making the next iteration of the Fill-scape \u2013 see the topo design plan and markers for where we are going – every stone raked and shifted helps.<\/p>\n
\nWe are excited to see how the installation changes over the course of the exhibition through your involvement. You can post on IG (tag #fill_edenunearthed) or send to melissa@transverstudio.com.<\/p>\n
\nOur aim is to have no stones left by the end of April, and to raise money for Father Chris Riley\u2019s Youth Off the Streets, so please fill a Fill bag for a $10 donation and take a part of Fill home with you to use in your garden. <\/p>\n
\nShare your thoughts about Fill, how we could improve it, and what the 2nd and 3rd iteration should look like by coming to one of our workshops (Dec 10 & Mar TBD – we will also learn Japanese dry garden raking techniques), or share to IG or melissa@transverstudio.com.<\/p>\n
\nFill<\/i> selected to be part of 2023\/24 Eden Unearthed exhibition<\/b>
\nForthcoming November 2023- April 2024
\nCurated by Meredith Kirton
\nEden Gardens, Macquarie Park, NSW <\/p>\n
\nCommunity Engagement Workshop<\/b>
\nARCH3202 Landscape Design Studio 4
\nDivision of Landscape Architecture, University of Hong Kong<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2023-07-27-at-14.43.38_1434.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nCivic Urbanisms Book Launch<\/b>
\nNUS and online<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2023-07-27-at-14.06.33_1186.png\")
\nFrom the announcement: Join us for the launch of a new book Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei Beyond Developmental Urbanization<\/i>, edited by Im Sik CHO, Bla\u017e Kri\u017enik, and Jeffrey Hou.<\/p>\n
\nTime: 15:00 to 17:00 Singapore Time (UTC\/GMT +8)
\nLocation: NUS Department of Architecture SDE 1 School conference room & online<\/p>\n
\nIm Sik CHO, National University of Singapore
\nCecilia CHU, University of Hong Kong=
\nJeffrey HOU, University of Washington
\nShiau Ching WONG, National University of Singapore<\/p>\n
\nBla\u017e KRI\u017dNIK, Hanyang University, Seoul
\nMelissa CATE CHRIST, UNSW Sydney
\nJan H.M. LIM, Participate in Design (P!D)
\nHuiying NG, Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society
\nMarta CATAL\u00c1N ERASO, Open University of Catalonia<\/p>\n
\nHong Kong\u2019s Urban Renewal Fund: A Step towards Citizen-driven Placemaking? <\/b>
\nEdited by Im Sik CHO, Bla\u017e Kri\u017enik, and Jeffrey Hou
\nMelissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben<\/p>\n
\nThis chapter investigates the relationship between Hong Kong\u2019s Urban Renewal Fund (URF) and citizen-driven placemaking (CDP). The URF was launched in 2011, in response to growing public concern about projects undertaken by Hong Kong\u2019s Urban Renewal Authority (URA). After discussing the evolving relationship of civil society to redevelopment and the background of the URF, the chapter presents three funded projects that utilize CDP approaches. The chapter examines the institutional frameworks and actors, and the achievements and limitations of CDP in the context of this state-sponsored programme. It also addresses prevailing contradictions between the small-scale, citizen-driven projects supported by the URF, and the large-scale redevelopment projects undertaken by the URA, as well as their implications for future civic urbanism in Hong Kong.
\nKeywords: Hong Kong, Citizen-Driven Placemaking, Community Building, Public Space<\/i><\/p>\n
\nwalking design \/ designing walks: Revealing water stories as paths to resilient urban landscapes<\/b>
\nUTS Vertical Studio Spring 2021
\nSubject Coordinator: Saskia Shut
\nStudio section convenor: Melissa Cate Christ<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2022-02-23-at-13.01.06_2368.png\")
\nAbove:Image credit Lily Depazzi ![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2022-02-23-at-12.59.37_2428.png\")
Below: Walk info credit: Oliver Turner
\nCongratulations to the second and third year students for their work for my studio ‘walking design \/ designing walks: Revealing water stories as paths to resilient urban landscapes’. It was a challenging term, navigating lockdown and working from home, but the students designed insightful walks and landscapes in their local (5k radius!) neighbourhoods, which ended up being from all areas of Sydney (and even one on the Central Coast!). If you’d like to explore their walks, designs, and interactive media elements, please visit the course website<\/a>, or explore their walking routes on the course Google map<\/a>, where all of the walks are collected. Many thanks to all the students<\/a> for their hard work on their own projects, as well as their collected work on the contextual mapping and website. Special thanks to the website group, to Fergus Barker for his work on the website and for his critical feedback throughout the term, to our guest critics Jayde Roberts, Lee Roberts, Jane Hutton, Kelly Majewski and Susanne Trumpf, and to the LA faculty at UTS for their critical feedback and support.<\/p>\n
\nThe effects of climate change are increasingly impacting individuals, cities, and regions around the globe. Many of these impacts are directly related to water supply, removal, and management, whether through sea level rise, or the increasing intensity and frequency of storms, floods, droughts and heat waves. In Greater Sydney, as in most places, the physical fact of the water management network is not an actively acknowledged part of most of our lives, that is, until it ceases to function. In this way, we can summarize our common experience of much of the infrastructure which is embedded in the landscape: it becomes invisible.<\/p>\n
\nOn envisioning innovative urban landscapes<\/b>
\nMaking Space for All: URF 10th Anniversary Thematic Seminar
\nHong Kong \/ Online<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screenshot-2022-02-23-at-15.04.14_2592.png\")
Melissa will present her talk ‘On envisioning innovative urban landscapes’ as a keynote speaker at ‘Making Space for All: URF 10th Anniversary Thematic Seminar’, which will be held in Hong Kong \/ online on September 24 2021. Sponsored by the Hong Kong Urban Renewal Fund, the seminar will celebrate the Magic Lanes project through a serious of talks and workshops, including presentations by Hendrik Tieben, Maggie Ma, Mingjay Kang and Jeff Hou. Special thanks to Caritas Mok Cheung Sui Kun Community Centre for organising and facilitating this event. From the event website<\/a>: ‘The seminar will bring together motivated members of the general public, students and stakeholders, and a range of diverse academic disciplines and practitioners. The intent is to provide a forum to consolidate their local experience and exchange knowledge and reflections.’ <\/i>Please join us for a day of celebration and discussion about community organising and place making!<\/p>\n
\nECLAS 2021: Stop and Think<\/b>
\nCultural Landscape Session<\/p>\n
\nAcademic paper session
\nTuesday September 14, 9-10:30
\nModerator(s): Mattias Qvistr\u00f6m and Melissa Cate Christ<\/p>\n
\nJulian Schaefer, Technical University Munich \u2502 Soeren Schoebel-Rutschmann, Technical University Munich
\nUrban studies primarily deal with conditions and qualities of public space as the relation between material texture and social spheres. For the countryside and the cultural landscape, there is a lack of debate on the relationship between morphology, texture and sociality of space. In the face of converging urban, suburban and rural lifestyles, the research is focused on spatial textures that provide the basic qualities of public space, such as accessibility, permeability, legibility and orientation, even in everyday landscapes, thus answering central social questions of openness, identification and integration. The project is based on the fundamental studies on figure and ground and adapts these methods for describing the spatial texture of landscape. The aim of the figure-ground analysis is to uncover which structures offer orientation and how encounters and centralities arise in the cultural landscape\u2014in other words, where morphological structures make public sphere possible. <\/p>\n
\nIris Dupper, LATZ+PARTNER
\nThe cultural landscape we see today, always \u2018contains\u2019 historic changes on nature. Many layers might overlay each other. If we have to decide, which layer of nature we want or have to protect, it is necessary to understand these historic changes in relation to the contemporary landscape. In order to understand the historical development of \u2018vernacular\u2019 cultural landscapes, it is important to properly understand symbolic design parameters, based on cultural ideas. Since millenia cultural ideas were transferred between countries and continents. Historic and paradigmatic cultural ideas are found in the field of landscape architecture in gardens. Finally it can be shown, that cultural ideas are indeed transferable from place to place to new cross-border contexts inspiring new cultural connections. To find planning methods and tools, which can understand these and generate sustainability, are the challenges for the profession of today. <\/p>\n
\nSwagata Das, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
\nRecently,there has been a growing understanding of the impact of climate change on the way the world is urbanising and the need to re-orient urban processes. The paper focuses on a specific pristine environment\u2014\u2018chars\u2019 or river islands of the Brahmaputra Basin, India. For a long time, the difficult conditions of the region\u2014high seismicity, erosion, physical remoteness, political unrest, insurgency\u2014 permitted it to maintain its near-pristine nature. Recently, the region has come into focus due to its strategic geopolitical location and hydrological potential. With massive waves of urbanisation and evident threats of climate change, it is necessary to look into the current river management mechanism in the Brahmaputra basin, based on principles of land utilisation and river control. This perception of land and water as two distinct physical entities has produced illegitimacy, robbing traditional landscapes of their histories and extracting them from their socio-cultural setting. <\/p>\n
\nNesli Naz Aksu, Middle East Technical University\/ azaksu architects \u2502 Funda Ba\u015f B\u00fct\u00fcner, Middle East Technical University \u2502Aysen Savas, Middle East Technical University \u2502 Sezin Sar\u0131ca, Middle East Technical University
\nBeing part of a natural, tectonic and temporal formation, the ground operates as a shared transdisciplinary milieu for mutual dialogue. Acknowledging recent planetary challenges necessitate a common design act. Our study scrutinises the ground through deep sections that continuously produce all forms of terrestrial and aquatic assemblages. As it carries multifarious layers and states, the sectional diversity of the ground motivates a new design lens for productive land formations. This research was conducted in two different geographies, Skopje and Bodrum, with fertile grounds in terms of archeological and natural resources. For Skopje, 1963 was a \u201cground zero\u201d that transformed its thick ground into deep debris. For Bodrum, the formation process of the deep water+land has been expanding for centuries, ending up with dramatic land takes. Thus, the studio exposes deep ground both as an analytical tool and a design agent, and focuses on recognising fertile grounds for creative programs. <\/p>\n
\nAmbiguous Topologies of Public Open Space in Hong Kong: Stairs, Alleyways, Sitting-out Areas, Parks, Playgrounds, Privately Owned Public Spaces and Vacant Lots<\/b>
\nInterstitial Hong Kong: Exploring the Miniature Open Spaces of High-Density Urbanism<\/i> (Jovis), p. 80-97
\nEd. by Susanne Trumpf, Xiaoxuan Lu and Ivan Valin
\nMelissa Cate Christ and Andrew Toland
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2021-02-26-at-12.04.52-PM_2062.png\")
\nWe are pleased to announce that Ambiguous Topologies of Public Open Space in Hong Kong: Stairs, Alleyways, Sitting-out Areas, Parks, Playgrounds, Privately Owned Public Spaces and Vacant Lots<\/b>, a chapter written by Melissa and Andrew Toland, has been published in the book Interstitial Hong Kong: Exploring the Miniature Open Spaces of High-Density Urbanism<\/i>, edited by Susanne Trumpf, Xiaoxuan Lu and Ivan Valin. Please find an except from the chapter below and more information about the book (and how to purchase it) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nMagic Lanes: A placemaking approach for alley spaces in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nAsian Alleyways: an Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization<\/i> (Amsterdam University Press), p. 181-205.
\nEd. by Marie Gibert-Flutre and Heide Imai
\nMelissa Cate Christ and Hendrik Tieben
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_B-WFig5_SheungFungLane_MelissaCateChrist_3543.jpg\")
\nWe are pleased to announce that Magic Lanes: A placemaking approach for alley spaces in Hong Kong<\/b>, a chapter written by Melissa and Hendrik Tieben, has been published in the edited volume Asian Alleyways: an Urban Vernacular in Times of Globalization<\/i>, Ed. by Marie Gibert-Flutre and Heide Imai. Please find the abstract below and the full chapter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nDocumenting topographic ecologies in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nRecombinant Ecologies in the City<\/i>
\nEd. by Ilaria Vanni and Alexandra Crosby, Visual Communication 2020-8 19(3), p. 391-414.
\nAndrew Toland and Melissa Cate Christ<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Figure-13_1662.jpg\")
Still shot from Pottinger Street 360 film by Nicholas Buechi. \u00a9 Nicolas Buechi.<\/p>\n
\nPOSTPONED – ECLAS 2020: Stop and Think<\/b><\/p>\n
\nFrom the committee:
\nThe words were apt. SARS-CoV2 cared not for our plans and scenarios. It set its own agenda, and we must now bend to its logic. We therefore regret to inform you that the ECLAS conference will not take place this year. This decision is a postponement, not a cancellation. Virus permitting, we will gather in September 2021 instead, and our acceptance of your proposal will remain valid until then. We will be sending updates on our planning process, including the possibility to revise or update your proposal, in the months to come. As always you are welcome to ask us questions via email. For the effects of this change on subsequent ECLAS conferences, please visit the official ECLAS website.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nCall for edited book chapter proposals<\/b>
\nGetting Political in the Neoliberal City: Resistance, Transformation, and the Practice of Design for Social and Environmental Justice<\/i>
\nEditors: Burcu Yigit Turan, Melissa Cate Christ & Cristina Cerulli<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2020-04-25-at-11.34.33-AM_764.png\")
\nThe call for book chapter proposals for our edited volume Getting Political in the Neoliberal City: Resistance, Transformation, and the Practice of Design for Social and Environmental Justice<\/i> (Routledge, Planning and Urban Design Series) is finally here<\/a>! We are seeking book chapter proposals which will critically reflect on politicised spatial practices, the democratization of city-making in relation to the current neoliberal context, and the reframing of professional and customary boundaries of planning, design, activism, and citizenship. Rooted in contemporary experiences and cases across diverse geographic contexts, this book will elaborate and theorise on these subjectivities and practices.<\/p>\n
\nCall for proposals<\/b>
\nECLAS Conference 2020: Stop and Think
\nSwedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU)
\nUppsala, Sweden
\n13-16 September 2020<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2020-05-27-at-9.42.38-PM_141_1266.png\")
\nFrom the announcement:
\nThe conference theme is \u2018Stop and Think\u2019. We invite academics and practitioners to pause and critically reflect on different aspects and aftermaths of knowledge production in relation to landscape architecture considering our historical moment. The conference is intended to bring together different disciplinary\/interdisciplinary\/transdisciplinary perspectives. You can read the full conference call here on https:\/\/conference.eclas.org<\/a>. The deadline for submissions is the 15th of January. <\/i><\/p>\n
\nFinal Review: 11178 Landscape Architecture Studio 4<\/b>
\nA dialectic of oneiric and pragmatic islands
\nSecond Year, UTS Bachelor of Landscape Architecture
\nSubject coordinator: Andrew Toland
\nInstructors: Andrew Toland and Melissa Cate Chirst<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2020-05-28-at-9.44.32-PM_1638.png\")
\nCongratulations to the second year students on their work for our studio, “A dialectic of oneiric and pragmatic islands”. From the brief: The studio will work simultaneously in both these registers \u2013 the pragmatic and the speculative. In other words, it will be dialectic and dialogical \u2013 it will proceed by means of opposing arguments and conditions, contrasting fantasy with reality, but requiring you to take both equally seriously, and to represent and document each with equal precision.<\/i> Thanks to our guest reviewers and to the students for their hard work and inspiring and innovative proposals for four of Sydney’s harbour islands!<\/p>\n
\nDigitalXPlace<\/b> published
\nPlacemaking Fundamentals for the Built Environment <\/i> (Palgrave Macmillian) Ed. Dominique HesCristina Hernandez-Santin.
\nAndrew Toland, Melissa Cate Christ, Julian Worrall<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2020-04-26-at-12.36.52-PM_2834.png\")
\nDigital placemaking is a term given to a range of evolving practices that combine emerging digital technologies and placemaking initiatives. Over the past five years, its meaning has significantly shifted as a result of the proliferation of smartphones as mobile technological platforms and the ubiquity of social media. This chapter aims to move beyond the current fashionability of both the \u2018digital\u2019 and \u2018placemaking\u2019 discourses to provide a critical consideration of various ways in which technology is shaping social-spatial design, research, and practices and vice versa. It considers a number of diverse cases in which urban situations and digital technologies have intersected. Ultimately, however, we argue that the techno-social matrix through which we currently perceive and understand the city is now already deeply suffused with digital media and tools, raising a question as to what the adjectival modifier \u2018digital\u2019 actually illuminates. This requires us to refocus our attention back towards the making of places with the most effective tools available, which will inevitably involve a mix of the analogue and the digital.<\/p>\n
\nDigital placemaking; Crowdsourcing; Community mapping; Participatory design; Post-disaster; Temporary urbanism .<\/i><\/p>\n
\nElaborated photo diaries as tools for problem-setting and concept development within the landscape architectural design studio<\/b>
\nMelissa Cate Christ & Andrew Toland
\nECLAS UNISCAPE Conference 2019
\n16-17 September 2019
\nNorwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)
\n\u00c5s, Norway<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2020-05-27-at-9.17.07-PM_2016.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nInvestigating the formation and development of landscape architecture curricula<\/b>
\nSLU, Uppsala, Sweden
\n1-2pm, Room TBC.<\/p>\n
\nStair Quest workshop<\/b>
\nMagic Lanes, Shop 7 Yee Fung Court, Sheung Fung Lane, Sai Ying Pun, HK
\n3-6pm<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_StairQuest_1417.jpg\")
\nPlease join us at the Hong Kong Stair Archive<\/a> for the second round of the Stair Quest game<\/a> workshop! And this time, we will collaborate with photographer, architect Hans Leo Maes<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cA long, long time ago, there was an epic battle between mighty dragons. Hong Kong\u2019s protective dragon fell and was shattered into more than 3000 pieces. The turned into stone and the dragon\u2019s spirit has since been buried in the stairs of Hong Kong Island\u201d<\/p>\n
\nYou need a recent Android smartphone or an iPhone with a data plan to play. While playing, please make sure that your GPS location services are enabled. It is not possible to play Stair Quest with a computer.<\/p>\n
\nWhile you are playing, your location will be tracked, but we do not store any location data on our server other than your stair check-ins. We do, however, use Google Analytics to improve the game experience and track its success. Also, we use Facebook as a login to protect us from spam users, but we do not read your profile information or send data back to Facebook.<\/p>\n
\nBook Launch<\/i>
\nSTEP UP\uff0dHong Kong stairs as productive public spaces <\/b>
\nO2 Hair Studio, Wa In Fong East Terrace, adjacent to the Shing Wong Street stairs
\n6:30pm<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_step-up_stack_sm_crop_1176.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_step-up_unfold_sm_1500.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_step-up_without-permission_page1_2205.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nPublished by transverse studio & MOSSES
\nBilingual; 60 pages
\nWith an introductory essay by Melissa Cate Christ<\/p>\n
\nSelections from the Hong Kong Stair Archive<\/b>
\nMelissa Cate Christ and Susanne Trumpf
\npart of the exhibition Sparkle! Journal of a City Foot Soldier<\/i>
\nCurator: Sara Wong
\nOi!, 12 Oil Street, North Point, Hong Kong
\nOctober 05, 2018 – January 06, 2019
\nOpening Reception: 6:30pm, October 05, 2018<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-08-at-5.39.20-PM_2240.png\")
\nFrom the exhibition catalog:<\/p>\n
\n\u300c\u9999\u6e2f\u6a13\u68af\u6587\u737b\u5eab\u300d\u662f\u9577\u671f\u7814\u7a76\u53ca\u7b56\u5c55\u8a08\u5283\u300c\u6a13\u68af\u6587\u5316\u300d\u7684\u5b50\u9805\u76ee\uff0c\u7531Melissa Cate Christ\/transverse studio \u4e3b\u7406\uff0c \u8207\u9999\u6e2f\u85dd\u8853\u5bb6\u3001\u8a2d\u8a08\u5e2b\u3001\u5b78\u751f\u3001\u7b56\u5c55\u4eba\u3001\u6587\u5316\u6a5f\u69cb\u53ca\u6559\u80b2\u5718\u9ad4\u5408\u4f5c\uff0c\u4ee5\u8a08\u5283\u70ba\u5e73\u53f0\uff0c\u63a2\u7d22\u6a13\u68af\u4f5c\u70ba\u57ce\u5e02\u65e5\u5e38\u666f\u89c0\uff0c\u5982\u4f55\u5b9a\u7fa9\u9999\u6e2f\u7684\u7279\u8272\u3002
\nhttp:\/\/stairculture.com\/<\/i><\/p>\n
\n“Typhoon Mangkhut battered Hong Kong\u2019s storied history”<\/b>
\nInterview for Washington Post<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-08-at-5.27.55-PM_1188.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-08-at-5.27.43-PM_1188.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-08-at-5.27.33-PM_1192.png\")
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<\/p>\n
\nAlways at the edge of things and between places: Curating from the Hong Kong Stair Archive<\/b>
\nSD5019 Design Criticism and Visual Arguments: Curating Design Practices
\n7-9pm<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-09-at-12.55.42-PM_2256.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nUrban villages, protest camps, and stairs as public space: Hong Kong urban landscapes<\/b>
\nSchool of Architecture, Level 5, Architecture Foyer
\nUniversity of Technology Sydney
\n1-2pm<\/p>\n
\nThe Agency of Landscape<\/b>
\nLT2, Ground Floor, Vivian Street Campus
\nSchool of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington
\n4pm<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-09-at-12.02.59-PM_890.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nDiscussion on Central Waterfront, its Landscape, and Urban potentials <\/b>
\npart of the exhibition Archigram Meets Central<\/i>
\nHUB (S710-711), 7\/F, Block A, PMQ, 35 Aberdeen St
\n14:30-16:30<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-10-09-at-10.34.54-AM_2044.png\")
<\/p>\n
\n2018 Visiting Fellow<\/b>
\nUniversity of Technology Sydney Key Technology Partner (KTP) Visiting Fellow Program<\/p>\n
\nCommunity Workshop @ Sheung Fung Lane<\/b>
\n2:30-5:00pm<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-04-18-at-5.51.26-PM_2026.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nExuberant Diversity: Stairs in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nThe Spirt of Jane Jacobs in Hong Kong: Community Participation + Urban Design
\n9am to 5pm
\nHK Trade Development Council in Wanchai (SME Centre)
\nOrganized by the Hong Kong America Center
\nWith Support from Leadership Inc, Knowledge Dialogues, Common Core@HKU, MaD Asia, and the US Consulate in Hong Kong and Macau<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-03-21-at-11.09.06-AM_1074.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nStair Quest workshop<\/b>
\nCommon Core Lounge, Main Building 150
\nUniversity of Hong Kong
\n15:00-17:30<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_stair_quest_v2_1684.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nUrban Projections in Paper\u2013Italo Calvino\u2019s Invisible Cities<\/b> Exhibition of student work from Year 3, PolyU Design
\nInnovation Tower, Hung Hom, Hong Kong
\nCoordinated by Gerhard Bryuns with tutors Evonne Tam, Melissa Cate Christ, Horace Pan and Sjoerd Hoekstra.<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-04-17-at-3.07.44-PM_1040.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nResilient Sai Ying Pun<\/b>
\nCACHe, Annex Block, 36A Western Street & Magic Lanes, Shop 7, Yee Fung Court, Sheung Fung Lane
\n10:00-13:00 \/ 14:00-16:00
\nOpening Ceremony for the exhibition and for the Magic Lanes community centre: March 3, 15:00-18:00<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-04-18-at-4.49.25-PM_2034.png\")
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![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-04-18-at-4.43.11-PM_1064.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nAlways Liminal, Always in Transition: Reading Hong Kong as a Staircase City<\/b>
\nLecture by Louis Lo, Associate Professor, National Taipei University of Technology
\nHong Kong Studies Initiative, Department of Asian Studies
\nUniversity of British Columbia, Vancouver<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-03-21-at-10.43.43-AM_1736.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nFinal review: RCA City Design HK workshop<\/b>
\n3:30-6:00pm<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-04-17-at-1.55.27-PM_1100.png\")
\nPhoto credit: RCA_citydesign<\/p>\n
\nHeritage, urban development and stairs <\/b>
\nTour & talk with Royal Collage of Art City Design Grad students<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2018-02-10-at-3.27.21-PM_800.png\")
\nPhoto credit: RCA_citydesign<\/p>\n
\nLearning from Hong Kong\u2019s Stair Culture<\/b>
\nThe 3rd City: 2017 International Festival of Landscape Architecture
\n12-15 October 2017
\nOverseas Passenger Terminal
\nCircular Quay, Sydney, Australia<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_22459256_2031916967037602_1421240153357292246_o_2048.jpg\")
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\nImage credits: AILA<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMagic Lanes Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration<\/b>
\nSheung Fung Lane, Sai Ying Pun
\n7 – 9pm, Opening ceremony 7:30pm
\nOrganized by Caritas Mok Cheung Sui Kun Community Centre and CACHE <\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_2017-09-29-PHOTO-00000241_1131.jpg\")
\nPlease join the Magic Lanes Community Design Studio in celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival in Sheung Fung Lane, Sai Ying Pun on 5 October (Thursday) from 7pm to 9pm. There will be games and traditional Mid-Autumn Festival food for guests to enjoy. Residents are also welcome to bring food to share with the neighbourhood. Students from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design will run stair games for visitors and students studying urban studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong will share some ideas and installations which are aimed at stimulating ideas about how to transform the public space of the stairs to better serve community needs.<\/p>\n
\nTime: 10am \u2013 12pm
\nVenue: Magic Lanes Community Design Studio
\nQuota: 10 people
\nFree of charge<\/p>\n
\nTime: 2pm \u2013 4pm
\nVenue: Magic Lanes Community Design Studio
\nQuota: 15 people
\nFree of Charge<\/p>\n
\nStairs, public participation and future developments in Shueng Wan<\/b>
\nTour & talk with Stamford and HKDI students<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2017-11-28-at-4.52.57-PM_1190.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2017-11-28-at-4.52.03-PM_1196.png\")
\nPhoto credits: Deland Chan\/humancities<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAlways at the edge of things and between places \u6c38\u9060\u5728\u908a\u7de3\u6c38\u9060\u5728\u904e\u6e21<\/b>
\n\u958b\u5e55\u5178\u79ae Opening Reception 13\/05\/2017 (Sat \u516d) 18:00 – 21:00
\n\u5c55\u89bd\u6642\u671f Exhibition Period\uff1a14\/5 – 03\/6\/2017
\n\u958b\u653e\u6642\u9593 Opening Hours\uff1a\u661f\u671f\u4e00 \u81f3 \u661f\u671f\u65e5 Monday to Sunday 10:00 – 19:00
\n\u5834\u5730 Venue\uff1aConnecting Space Hong Kong G\/F, Fort Street 18-20, Wah Kin Mansion North Point, Hong Kong
\n\u5317\u89d2\u5821\u58d8\u885718-20\u865f\u83ef\u5065\u5927\u5ec8\u5730\u4e0b
\nhttp:\/\/stairculture.com\/archive\/exhibition\/<\/a>
\nhkstairculture@gmail.com
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/alwaysathedge<\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_StairExh-Flyer-0320-01_1430.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_StairExh-Flyer-0320-02_1431.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nThe cultural landscape, collective memory and adaptive reuse, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mall<\/b>
\nGeneral Post Office: A Discussion
\nMonday, February 20, 2017
\n7:00 — 8:30 PM
\nRoom KB 419, Knowles Building<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Central_Post_Office_final.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\nKeeping it Fresh<\/b>
\nShelf Life<\/i>
\nHarvard Design Magazine
\nNo 43 F\/W 2016
\nMelissa Cate Christ, Tomas Holderness and Daisy Tam<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_keeping-it-fresh_HDM43FW2016_ShelfLife_4032.jpg\")
\nOur short piece, “Keeping it Fresh” has been published in the F\/W 2016 edition of the Harvard Design Magazine, Shelf Life<\/i>. From the issue abstract: The more stuff we accumulate, the more space we need to store it all. Vast portions of the landscape are claimed and governed by spaces of storage, their maintenance, and the goods that move through them\u2014or remain buried within them indefinitely. This issue of Harvard Design Magazine investigates and unpacks the contents, containers, and systems of storage that organize our world. Storage is the aggregation and containment of the material and immaterial stuff of culture; but also the safeguarding\u2014or hoarding\u2014of energy and tools for some imagined future purpose. How does all this stuff mask or overcompensate for economic and ecological bankruptcy? Is storage about greed or need? Storage, perhaps, is everything we can live without but insist on living with. \u201cShelf Life\u201d explores what\u2019s inside the box (shed, tank, urn, vault, crypt, crate, case, pot, bag, vat, morgue, safe, bin, archive, warehouse, cabinet, cellar, cemetery, depository, locker, freezer, landfill, library). Even as we attempt to reduce and recycle, the stuff that we dispose of also needs to be stored. Where do we put it? Our planet is now a saturated receptacle. This warehouse is full, and we\u2019re all inside it.<\/i> <\/p>\n
\nPresent, past and future: Collaborative actions for a resilient Pokfulam Village <\/b>
\nAgency and Resilience: 10th Annual conference of the Pacific Rim Community Design Network
\nChinese University of Hong Kong
\nDecember 15-17, 2016
\nMelissa Cate Christ, Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Benjamin Sin, Caritas; and Dr. Gary Pui-fung Wong, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2017-01-06-at-2.33.14-PM_1926.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2017-01-06-at-2.32.40-PM_1844.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2017-01-06-at-2.32.17-PM_1872.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nUrban stair streets as public spaces, cultural heritage and essential infrastructure: The case of the Central and Western District of Hong Kong<\/b>
\nCrossroads: Asian Streets in the Dynamics of Change
\nGreat Asian Street Symposium 2016
\nNational University of Singapore
\n12-13 December 2016<\/p>\n
\nAsian streets are…at a crossroads. The ways in which we perceive and use, plan and build our streets need to be re-visited, re-considered and re-developed. Established norms, conceptions and systems need to be questioned and reflected. And new visions of streets in future urbanism also need to be contemplated and developed. Lying at the crossroads of many disciplines, streets [are] arguably a field of application rather than a discipline in its own right. Hence, to tackle the above-mentioned challenges for street requires investigations from multiple perspectives and it will also benefit from inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations.<\/i> More information on the conference can be found here<\/a>.
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2017-01-06-at-2.52.43-PM_1966.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nHong Kong’s stairs: socio-cultural landscapes, essential infrastructure<\/b>
\nUniversity of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
\n1:00-2:00pm, Room CB06.06.38<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Landscape-Lecture_Melissa-Cate-Christ_02_874.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nStairs as public spaces: Stair culture in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nNational Taipei Technical University, Taipei, Taiwan<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-09-at-10.45.14-AM_1064.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nIn the Know: Walking a cultural landscape of Hong Kong<\/b>
\nWalk21 Walkshop
\n3:00-5:30pm, begin at Dominion Garden<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-10-31-at-5.08.55-PM_1620.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nWalking, heritage and public space: Stair Culture in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nWalk21 Hong Kong
\nHong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
\nWan Chai, Hong Kong<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_at-walk21_presenting_1267.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nUrban Dialogues: Under Threat: The General Post Office & State Theatre <\/b>
\nAn event organised by Docomomo Hong Kong Chapter
\nTuesday, September 27, 2016, 7:00-8:30 PM
\nRoom KB 419, Knowles Building
\nThe University of Hong Kong <\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_2ndUrbanDialogue-poster_V3_1000.jpg\")
\nPlease join us for a panel discussion about threatened heritage in Hong Kong. Over the past decade, Hong Kong citizens have become increasingly concerned with how historical buildings are being assessed for their heritage value, a process that often determines their chances of survival and conservation. In this second event of Docomomo HK\u2019s Urban Dialogues series, we will discuss two buildings that are facing threats of redevelopment: The General Post Office (\u90f5\u653f\u7e3d\u5c40) and the State Theatre (\u7687\u90fd\u6232\u9662). Both sties, which are considered as representative examples of the Modern Movement, have recently been listed as \u201cHeritage-in-Danger\u201d by Docomomo International (www.docomomo.co\/heritage<\/a>). <\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/www.docomomo.hk\/urban-dialogues-two\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\nInside out: applying experiential learning during the 2014 Hong Kong protests to an urban environmental design studio context<\/b>
\nEuropean Council of Landscape Architecture Schools (ECLAS) Conference 2016<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Image1_2268.jpg\")
\nMelissa presented her paper at the annual ECLAS conference<\/a>. From the abstract:
\nThis article presents a brief overview of a third year undergraduate Interior and Environmental Design \u2018option\u2019 studio which aimed to engage students in the design of situated tactical \u2018interior\u2019 interventions in the \u2018exterior\u2019 urban landscape by drawing on their first-hand experiences of an informally occupied urban environment. It presents the background, programmatic concerns and methods of the transdisciplinary studio\u2019s problem-setting approach. It then explores how the students\u2019\u2019s subjective observation and experience of a \u2018real world\u2019 scenario (i.e. of informally living outside during the 2014 Hong Kong protests, also termed the Umbrella Movement) translated to their ability to identify, map, diagram and analyse key issues and sites and whether and how that process enabled the students to effectively contextualize and envision hybrid \u2018inside-out\u2019 interventions.
\n<\/i>
\nAugust 23, 2016
\nRecover and Reduce Food Waste: Crowdsourcing Surplus Food Recovery in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nRISUD Annual International Symposium 2016 \u2013 Smart Cities
\nPolyU, Hong Kong<\/p>\n
\nThis paper presents an in-progress project which aims to reduce the amount of food waste generated in Hong Kong. Through the consolidation and analysis of data concerning existing food rescue practices and the development of an open source platform that facilitates crowdsourced surplus food recovery, this research and technological demonstration project aims to enhance the city\u2019s capacity to recycle surplus food.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nDaisy Tam publishes article on HK food security in Chinese online magazine The Initium<\/b><\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-03-at-3.15.26-PM_1718.png\")
\nDaisy Tam, Food Security in HK<\/i>, Metta, HK. July 29, 2016 <\/p>\n
\nPlanter workshop with Rooftop Republic
\n<\/a><\/b>French International School, Hong Kong<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.05.22-PM_1312.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.05.39-PM_1302.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.06.04-PM_1298.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-05-at-12.04.12-PM_1156.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nArticle on Hong Kong stairs published in HK Magazine<\/b><\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-09-03-at-2.50.30-PM_1636.png\")
Image credit: HK Magazine<\/p>\n
\nArticle by Christopher DeWolf on Stair Culture project published in Zolima City Magazine<\/b><\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Central_District_1946_Hedda_Morrison_RESTORED_4172217394-copy_1400.jpg\")
Pottinger Street, 1946 (Photo credit: Hedda Morrison)<\/p>\n
\nCrowdsourcing the Smart City \u2013
\nNew Methodologies for Participatory Mapping & Civic Co-Management of Urban Environments<\/b>
\nPublic lecture by Dr. Tomas Holderness<\/a>
\n6:30-8:00pm
\nV302, 3\/F, Jockey Club Innovation Tower
\nSchool of Design<\/a>, Hong Kong Polytechnic University<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-04-22-at-10.35.27-AM_1028.png\")
\nFrom the lecture abstract:
\nThis public lecture explores the design, creation and deployment of the world\u2019s first real-time megacity flood map PetaJakarta.org in Jakarta, Indonesia. Using a geosocial intelligence approach to megacity flooding, the project engages social media, citizen journalism, digital sensors and government alerts to plot locations of flooding in real-time on a free and open map.<\/i> <\/p>\n
\nUrban Dialogues: Reconfiguring Hong Kong’s Central District<\/b>
\nPanel organized by docomomo hong kong<\/a>
\nRm 419, Knowles Building, University of Hong Kong
\n6:30-8:45pm<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-04-01-at-3.12.34-PM_954.png\")
Melissa has been invited to moderate the roundtable discussion for the docomomo organized event ‘Urban Dialogues: Reconfiguring Hong Kong’s Central District’. From the event abstract:
\nThe past few years have seen a growing number of public debates over the future development of Hong Kong\u2019s Central District, including the pedestrianization of major roads and conservation of buildings and sites with historical significance. This symposium brings together professionals, academics and members of the general public to discuss the past, present and future of the Central District and envision ways for building a more sustainable and livable city.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nUrban Stairs as Public Spaces in High-Density Island Cities:
\nThe Case of the Central and Western District of Hong Kong Island<\/b>
\nIsland Cities and Urban Archipelagos 2016 Conference
\nUniversity of Hong Kong, Hong Kong<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-04-01-at-3.10.27-PM_2078.png\")
Melissa presented her research-in-progress on the RGC funded Hong Kong Stair Archive project at the Island Cities and Urban Archipelagos conference on March 09, 2016. From the conference abstract:
\nThis conference brings together researchers from across the globe to explore urban life on islands and archipelagos. Islands are often associated with peripherality, yet they have long been important sites for the growth of cities. Physical separation from the mainland and spatial limitations can encourage the transport of products and ideas, improved defence infrastructure, construction of social capital, consolidation of political power, formation of vibrant cultures, and concentration of population. Some island cities were located on inland river islands and have since expanded far beyond their original borders while others are still strongly associated with their island cores. Fostering dialogue between the fields of island studies and urban studies, this interdisciplinary conference will feature presentations that explore and critique the varied connections between the urban and the insular from a diversity of perspectives on culture, planning, politics, architecture, economy, and environment in island cities worldwide. We welcome papers and panels focusing on individual case studies as well comparative analyses and conceptual frames.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nStair walk: Shueng Wan to Wan Cha<\/b>i
\nHong Kong Global Design Studio, UTS<\/p>\n
\nHong Kong Stair Archive online<\/b> (beta version)
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_header_image_stair14_edited_1627.jpg\")
\nThe Hong Kong Stair Archive (beta) website<\/a> is up and running, with more materials being added everyday. Keep an eye out for updates and announcements about the site, exhibition, workshops\/talks and call for artists and the publication. Also, please contact us<\/a> if you want to take part in our crowdsourcing efforts to collect photos, stories and other information about stairs in Hong Kong or if you have other suggestions or comments!<\/p>\n
\nFinal Studio Review, BA(Hons) in Landscape Architecture<\/b>
\nFaculty of Design and Environment, Thei, Kowloon Tong, HK<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-01-25-at-4.08.49-PM_1840.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-01-25-at-4.08.20-PM_1878.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-01-25-at-4.09.26-PM_1906.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nListening to noise \u2013 people as sensors, enabling ethical food networks<\/b>
\nAgri-food XXII Conference
\nQueenstown, New Zealand<\/p>\n
\nThis paper looks at the individual in relation to urban food networks and explores the potential of the crowd as a means to enable a more ethical food system. The crowd is noise \u2013 dispersed individuals who are loose and unconnected. How can the crowd become a form of human-power sensor network that allows us to tune into the message? How can noise be used to challenge the existing system and allow for different sets of interdependencies to emerge? How can this model of commonality exist without collectivity? The import-distribute consume-dispose food system such as the one in Hong Kong is controlled by a handful of big players where individuals are relegated to their role as consumers. This paper explores alternatives that interrupt the linear model and allow disparate individuals to form collaborative practices for a more ethical food system. Ethics here is understood as a mode of operation, which articulates a set of relationships; it is a manner of being implicated in the provocation of actions; it is also generative, creating a series of radiating effect which impacts upon the community.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nA path to increasing food security in Hong Kong?<\/b>
\nFood sovereignty, food waste reduction, and local food production <\/i>
\nMing Pao Weekly (in Traditional Chinese)<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-01-25-at-4.45.38-PM_2018.png\")
\nChoi Yuen Farm Photo credit: Melissa Cate Christ
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2016-01-25-at-4.49.49-PM_1128.png\")
\nRanked high on Nomura\u2019s 2010 Food Vulnerability Index (7th of 80 countries), and with 4.4% of GDP spent on food imports (the highest in the world), Hong Kong\u2019s food security is an area of concern and focus by government bodies, academics, NGOs, and local businesses and entrepreneurs. Food security is defined as the right of \u201call people, at all times, [to] have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life\u201d (FAO, 1996). The availability of food, either through local supply or imports, along with physical and economic access to food and the ability to utilize food both safely and nutritionally, are the three primary dimensions of ensuring food security.<\/p>\n
\nFood Security and the Commons: the case of Singapore<\/b>
\nGDAR1026 Food Culture and Society course
\nHong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong<\/p>\n
\nTaipingshan Secrets<\/b>
\nPart of the Asia Art Archive’s 2nd annual Open Saturday
\nProduced by transverse studio, Pound Lane Concern Group and Taipingshan Community Storytelling<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_AAAOS_eflyer_transversestudio_3333.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n#MapPokfulam project featured on TVB’s Sunday Report<\/b>
\n(in Cantonese)<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2015-05-07-at-5.30.04-PM_2710.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2015-05-07-at-5.29.51-PM_2720.png\")
\nThis community mapping project is supported by the Hong Kong Southern District Council and the Southern District Health and Safety Association in collaboration with Caritas and the Pokfulam Village Cultural Landscape Conservation Group, Pokfulam Villagers and university students. <\/p>\n
\nCar-free Sundays: A Hong Kong Edition?<\/b>
\nMing Pao Weekly (in Traditional Chinese)<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_walkingFreeway_67_2242.jpg\")
Umbrella Movement, October 2015 Photo credit: Melissa Cate Christ<\/p>\n
\nSites of Collision: Defining Grounds of Exception in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nAssociation of Asian Studies 2015 Annual Conference
\n5:00-7:00pm
\nSheraton Towers, Chicago
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_IMG_4815_3264.JPG\")
\nPhoto credit: Melissa Cate Christ
\nAs part of the panel, “Envisioning the Future Chinese City at the Margins: Spatial production and Representation in Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan” with Janet Ng (CUNY), Chun Chun Ting (University of Chicago) and Auru Lee (CUNY), Melissa will present her paper, “Sites of Collision: Defining Grounds of Exception in Hong Kong”.
\nPaper abstract:
\nAs a city that has long leveraged its geo-political and economic position between the global economy and China, Hong Kong offers key examples of the power of exception as a tool of development. Today Hong Kong is at a pivotal moment in its history \u2013 between a collaborative British colony (Law 2009) and a hyper-dense Special Administrative Region soon to become just another mid-sized Chinese city in the Pearl Delta mega-region. Issues such as environmental and social justice, food security, cultural heritage and the future of governance are becoming increasingly urgent as local residents take exception to normative neo-liberal policies and practices. This local agency is evidenced in particular sites of collision: productive spaces where residents have applied their own logic of exception to change the lived experience of the city. <\/p>\n
\nArt, Design and Activism in Contemporary Landscape<\/b>
\n4:30\u20136:30 p.m.
\nSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago
\nThe LeRoy Neiman Center
\n37 S. Wabash Ave., 1st floor<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_ArtDesignActivism_66_225.jpg\")
\nFrom the panel description:
\nDo contemporary landscapes yield new forms of advocacy and activism? Or, do activists and advocates define new understandings of the landscape? What does this mean for artists and designers? Join Frances Whitehead, a civic practice artist working in disturbed urban sites, Melissa Cate Christ, a landscape architect and urban designer, and Jane Hutton, a landscape architect and an editor of Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy, for a discussion of art, design, and activism in the contemporary landscape.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nAging Dragons
\nPost-Growth of Asian Cities: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo<\/i><\/b>
\nExhibited in conjunction with the symposium Beyond Big Plans ISOCARP2015: Let’s Reinvent Planning
\nCitizen’s Gallery, Seoul City Hall
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_aging-dragons_1186.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nAlthough Hong Kong is rather a short story within the development of cities – compared to others – due to its unique political, geographical, cultural, and environmental forces Hong Kong has become a model for an ever-growing high-density metropolis. When other cities enter shrinkage, or development bubbles due to the rhythm of market circles and population flows, the limitation of space in Hong Kong forces the constant growth of the City. <\/p>\n
\nThe Old is the New and the New is the Old: Christiane Lange and Paul Mok
\n#Village Development #Heritage #Colonization #Small-House-Policy #Land Ownership<\/p>\n
\n#New Town Development #Homogenous Housing Estates #Social Distance<\/p>\n
\nDe-vitalization: Andres Delpon
\n#Public Housing Estates #Urban Renewal #Mei Ho House Hostel Shek Kip Mei
\n#HOS block Tsuen Wan #Social Housing<\/p>\n
\n#MTR Development #Homogenous Housing Estates #Olympus #Social Distance<\/p>\n
\n#Subdivision #Urban Renewal #Polarization
\n
\nHong Kong Island<\/i>
\nOff the Street: Susanne Trumpf
\n#Central Market Development #Podium Tower #Central #Public-Private Development
\n#Podium #Street Segregation<\/p>\n
\n#Activism #BottomUpPractice #SheungWan #PoundLane #Preservation #StairCulture #Taipingshan #stepUp<\/p>\n
\n#Expat Culture #Gentrification #Central
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_AD-Exhibit-Conference-1-of-1-21web_473.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_AD-Exhibit-Conference-1-of-1-19web_425.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_AD-Exhibit-Conference-1-of-1-6web_425.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n#MapPokfulam: System Prototype Demo & Testing Workshop<\/b>
\nSunday March 8, 2-4pm
\nOld Restaurant, Main Street, Pokfulam Village<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_080315workshop_web_960.jpg\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_080315workshop2_web_960.jpg\")
\nThis community mapping project is supported by the Hong Kong Southern District Council and the Southern District Health and Safety Association in collaboration with Caritas and the Pokfulam Village Cultural Landscape Conservation Group, Pokfulam Villagers and university students. <\/p>\n
\n#MapPokfulam Open Street Mapping workshop<\/b>
\nSunday, February 8, 2-4pm
\nPokfulam Village Community plaza<\/p>\n
\nImage credit: Jerome Favre\/EPA![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2015-02-09-at-2.13.54-PM_1310.png\")
![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2015-02-09-at-2.13.36-PM_1070.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nThe Future of the Past: New Conservation Strategies for Modern Architecture in the Pearl River Delta Symposium<\/b>
\nSaturday, January 31, 2 – 5:30 pm
\nKnowles Building Room 419, University of Hong Kong
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_FuturePast-poster_blue_5000.jpg\")
\nSymposium abstract:
\nFew parts of the world have developed as quickly over the last forty years as the Pearl River Delta, which includes Macau and Hong Kong, and few areas face the kinds of community- and market-based pressures still at work in the area today. This symposium seeks to discuss modern architecture\u2019s legacy in the region as well as the risks and potential offered by new practices aimed at conserving it.<\/i><\/p>\n
\n– Miles Glendinning, Professor, Scottish Centre for Conservation Studies, University of Edinburgh
\n– Andrew Lam Siu-lo, Chairman, Antiquities Advisory Board (AAB), Hong Kong
\n– Katty Law, Member, Central & Western Concern Group<\/p>\n
\nTOURETTE #00: Wide Open<\/b>
\nAndrew Toland, Susanne Trumpf and I are pleased to announce TOURETTE#00 has been published. The issue includes our finalist Call for Papers submission for guest editing Issue #04 ‘What’s the matter?’. More information and all the entire TOURETTE #00 can be found here<\/a><\/p>\n
\nStrategies of spatial occupation in Hong Kong:
\nthe role of collective resistance in defining a cultural landscape<\/b>
\nInternational Conference on Citizens, Civil Society & the Cultural Politics of Hertiage-Making in East and Southeast Asia Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica
\nTaipei, Taiwan
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_IMG_5723_3400.JPG\")
<\/p>\n
\nCrowdsourcing logistics OR The role of open data, citizen participation and social media in enabling ethical food systems and reducing food waste: Surplus food practices as commons <\/b>
\nThursday, December 4, 2:45pm
\nCeDEM Asia 2014 conference, CMC, CityU, HK<\/p>\n
\nEssentially, this workshop asks how to enable a commons practice within the domain of surplus food recovery and redistribution using an open data model which enables citizen participation through social media and other technological platforms. Garrett Hardin\u2019s Tragedy of the Commons challenged the presumption that the benefit of a group is sufficient to generate collective action. How could we imagine a practice that is collective, self generative and also bottom-up?<\/p>\n
\nEnvisioning Pokfulam Village: Strategies of Engagement in Complex Urban Communities<\/b>
\n2014 DesignEd Asia Conference, part of the Business of Design Week 2014
\nHong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Wan Chai
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_IMG_6244-1024x682_670.jpg\")
\nMelissa presented her paper at DesignEd Asia 2014 as part of the Culture panel and moderated the Education Practice Panel, both on December 2, 2014.<\/p>\n
\nPotential Futures: the Changing Cultural Landscape of Yangon’s Waterfront<\/b>
\n2014 International Symposium of the Asian Cultural Landscape Association: Waterfront Asian Cultural Landscapes
\nSeoul National University, Seoul
\nco-authored by Melissa Cate Christ, Scott Melbourne, and Ivan Valin
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2014-10-20-at-9.57.14-PM_o.png\")
Photo credit: Scott Melbourne<\/p>\n
\nHistorically, Yangon was a strategically important British colonial trading port with a vast and productive hinterland. The city\u2019s riverfront, the Strand, was a broad public edge devoted to commercial processing, industry, and transportation. Today, it is a contested site: increasingly walled-off, disconnected, secured, privatized, and undervalued as a public resource and heritage asset. Yangon\u2019s ongoing economic, demographic, and physical transformations are challenging its leaders, planners, and communities to accommodate these changes fairly and efficiently while preserving Yangon\u2019s unique heritage and urban character.<\/p>\n
\nDesigning places of emancipation?<\/b>
\nVienna University of Technology
\nVienna, Austria<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2014-10-20-at-9.36.56-PM_o.png\")
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\nFrom the SKuOR website:
\nThe programme of the summer school spans across 7 days, and includes research walks and talks with local activists, NGOs and neighbours, five guest lectures by international keynote speakers and workshops supported by the local scientific team and members of the Thematic Group for Public Spaces and Urban Culture of the Association of European Schools of Planning. Invited guests will not only \u201cdeliver\u201d knowledge, but also join in the practical teamwork. Local initiatives will particularly provide insights on emerging cultures and local needs, and supply provocative questions related to the practical examination of the site and the topic. The workshops will then put emphasis on the development of the action research approach and provide room for feedback and exchange on participants\u2019 work. The programme will culminate with a self-organized public event which will involve local residents. It is here, where alternative ideas for opening the area towards the wider local public will be displayed and shared.<\/p>\n
\nThis summer school will explore possibilities and limitations of participatory action research as an empowering catalyst for the constitution of city publics. The school will be conducted in five teams, each engaged in one of five learning fields. Each team of six students will ideally be supported by a local actor, a keynote speaker, a member of the local scientific team and an European scholar.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nOpen source system developer needed (Contract position)<\/b>
\nThe Caritas Pokfulam Community Development Project is looking to put together an online, open source platform to crowdsource emergency management for the village, ideally using an existing free system such as Ushahidihi. The project will run from Sept 2014 – Feb 2015 with a budget of approx. HK$25-30K for a developer to install, customize, and test the platform, as well as provide initial training for the villagers in collaboration with the project coordinators (who will run a series of workshops to engage villagers in the development process). The developer should also be able to advise on sustainable hosting and data storage options. Fluency in English is required, Cantonese ability is a plus. For more information, please contact Melissa Cate Christ at melissa@transversestudio.com.
\nAlso see http:\/\/job.opensource.hk\/node\/44<\/a><\/p>\n
\nMoving Hong Kong<\/b>
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2014-07-22-at-8.22.38-AM_o.png\")
\nMy short piece on the Mid-Levels escalator and the future of the pedestrian landscape in Hong Kong (illustrated by my photos and those of the talented Kevin Dharmawan) has been published in the 2nd issue of MY LIVEABLE CITY<\/b>, a new magazine sold and distributed across India which focuses on the contemporary challenges of creating dynamic, livable cities. More information about the magazine can be found here<\/a> and @citieswelike. Download the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nTOURETTE #00: Wide Open<\/b>
\nAndrew Toland, Susanne Trumpf and I are pleased to announce that our submission to TOURETTE#00, ‘What’s the matter?’ has been accepted as a finalist for the guest editing of one issue of the journal. Issue #00 will publish the 18 selected ‘call for calls’ finalists. More info from the journal here<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\noffers winning applicants the opportunity to curate one issue of the journal and contribute to the all-too-contemporary quest for relevancy within architectural discourse. At a time of collective and disciplinary crisis, in which architecture is looking outside of itself in order to redefine its boundaries, WIDEOPEN looks for intriguing questions rather than easy answers, challenging doubts rather than soothing certainties. WIDEOPEN challenges issues of authoriality within the discipline by soliciting a collective effort and foregrounding participation. The first issue of the journal, gathering the collection of accepted calls, will read as a crowd sourced manifesto of contemporary architecture. The whole structure of the journal will revolve around this first issue, expanding it and implementing its scope. <\/p>\n
\nSubmitted call for papers will deal with one of the following macrothemes\/tagwords, expanding it, stretching it and counterubbing it in any way possible. The tagwords are intended to cover some significant moments in the process of design, but are intentionally ambiguous so as to encourage the most diverse interpretations of them:<\/p>\n
\n. ACTORS (Tourette #2)
\n. REPRESENTATION (Tourette #3)
\n. MATTER (Tourette #4)
\n. MACHINE (Tourette #5)
\n. FATE (Tourette #6)<\/i><\/p>\n
\nCitizens, Civil Society and the Cultural Politics of Heritage-Making in East and Southeast Asia<\/b>
\nConference at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica
\nTaipei, Taiwan (forthcoming 11-13 December, 2014)<\/p>\n
\nIn considering the role of local communities and civil society organizations in heritage-making, the second conference will dwell on the figure of the citizen, broadly understood. What are the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of a citizen, and how does this relate to the modern nation-state and the notion of heritage, particularly in the contemporary environment where the role of the state and that of citizens are being reconfigured to serve a neo-liberal agenda? How does citizens\u2019 involvement in heritage-making contribute to the civility of a shared societal life, and indeed, in some countries, to the sense of nationhood and civilization? In other words, what are the dynamics involved when local communities, as citizens, not just in the narrow legal-constitutional sense (with the propensity this restrained status has to turn citizens into citizen- consumers), but more broadly speaking in the socio-political sense, engage in the definition of their heritage-scape through a common civil space where multiple interests and agendas vie for resources and meanings? In raising these questions, the conference explores how processes of heritage-making, as part of the everyday cultural practices through which cultural citizenship is asserted and discursively constituted, challenges the dominance of the state in defining its citizens.<\/i>
\nMore information and the full call for proposals for the conference can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nHong Kong Stair Archive funded by the Research Grants Council<\/b>
\nI am pleased to announce that my project, Hong Kong Stair Archive<\/i><\/i>, has been awarded an Early Career Scheme grant by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council. The total award is HK$856,355, with HK$50,000 of that specifically earmarked for the training of undergraduate students. For more information on the award and other awardees from across Hong Kong, see here<\/a> and for a brief introduction to the project see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nSpecifics: Discussing Landscape Architecture<\/b>
\nMy paper on understanding everyday landscape constructions as evidence of distributed infrastructural action, which I presented at the ECLAS 2013 conference on Specifics in Hamburg, has been published by Jovis.
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2014-07-19-at-3.28.25-AM_o.png\")
\nThe publication Specifics: Discussing Landscape Architecture<\/i><\/a> is based on a selection of the papers from the conference and has been edited by Christiane S\u00f6rensen and Karoline Liedtke.<\/p>\n
\nOpen Source Cities:<\/b> Next Generation Community Mapping & Open Data Infrastructure<\/b>
\norganized and moderated by Melissa Cate Christ, transverse studio<\/a> & Etienne Turpin, anexact office<\/a> & SMART Infrastructure Facility
\nas part of Open Platform: Asia Art Archive<\/a> @ Art Basel Hong Kong 2014<\/i>
\nLevel 1, Booth P1, Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre
\nSaturday 17 May 2014 14:00-15:30
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen-Shot-2014-05-20-at-12.31.06-PM_o.png\")
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\nCommunity-led mapping practices have become an integral part of architecture and design, geography and urban studies, and artistic, curatorial, and social scientific research. In order to study the transformation of urban systems, researchers can no longer rely on inherited, proprietary maps; the next generation of urban scholars are learning to map the city with new tools and, together with residents, develop public, open source, and open access resources for civic co-management and participatory democracy.<\/p>\n
\n– Dr. Tomas Holderness<\/a>, PetaJakarta.org, UoW\/Australia, 2014 Twitter Data Grant Recipient<\/a>
\n– Mart van de Ven, Co-founder & Director and Darcy Christ, Journalism and Policy Analyst, Open Data Hong Kong<\/a>, local chapter of Open Knowledge Foundation
\n– Hong Kong MTR data and social media representative (TBD)
\n– Paul Zimmerman<\/a>, Founder and CEO, Designing Hong Kong
\n– Gabrielle Kirstein, Executive Director, Feeding HK<\/a>
\n– Benjamin Sin, Team Leader, Caritas<\/a> Community Development Project
\n– Other local NGO \/ community groups interested in or currently using open mapping tools (TBD)<\/p>\n
\nAll are welcome to join the discussion!<\/p>\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_20140212_GraspSurvey_09sm_o.jpg\")
Community activists from Ciliwung Merdeka in Bukit Duri, Jakarta, test a new social media platform for post-flood damage surveys in Feb. 2014. Image courtesy of anexact.org<\/i><\/p>\n
\nMake 3.0: Data with a Purpose<\/b>
\n2-6pm, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, HKU<\/p>\n
\nOn Air: It all starts from the air<\/b>
\nEvent organized by the Clean Air Network, art exhibition curated by Yan Kallen<\/p>\n
\nFloating in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nMelissa Cate Christ \/ new.transversestudio.com\/
\nProject Team: Andrew Toland and 2012\/13 HKU BALS2 students<\/p>\n
\nArchiving a moment in a city perpetually reconstructing itself, our attention is captured by the spaces in between the buildings, the public spaces which are often overlooked by developers, but which make up our everyday lives, floating above, yet tethered to the ground.<\/p>\n
\nThe Clean Air Network is hosting “ON AIR: It all starts from the air,” a two-day event which draws attention to air pollution, sustainable transport policies, and areas such as urban planning to explore how to make our cities more people-oriented. We invite the public to explore the neighborhood of Tai Ping Shan Street in Sheung Wan. In the public spaces, alleyways, parks, sport grounds and shops, there will be a variety of different happenings for the public to participate in. The hope is to rethink the relationship between air pollution, transportation policy, urban planning and our daily lives.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nStrategies of Spatial Occupation in Hong Kong<\/b>
\nAssociation of Asian Studies Annual Conference
\nPhiladelphia, PA, USA<\/p>\n
\nPaper presenters:\tMegan Blake
\n Melissa Cate Christ
\n Jonathan Solomon
\n Daisy Tam
\nDiscussant: \t\t Jeff Hou<\/p>\n
\nStrategies of Spatial Occupation in Hong Kong<\/b><\/p>\n
\nSeason Shift: Radical Phenology and the Global Economy of Food<\/b>
\nAssistant Professor Melissa Cate Christ
\nLunchtime Public Lecture
\nHKU Division of Landscape Architecture
\nFriday, 21 February 2014, 1\u20132pm
\nKB622, 6\/F Knowles Building, Pokfulam Road, the University of Hong Kong
\nThis lecture is part of \u2018The Lay of the Land\u2019, a lecture series hosted by the HKU Division of Landscape Architecture<\/a> focused on research in progress.<\/p>\n
\nThis talk presents initial research that seeks to understand our pervasive seasonal disassociation with respect to food. In particular, it highlights nodes of historical, technological and vernacular agencies and practices that have enabled the global food economy.<\/p>\n
\nSeeing Pokfulam<\/b>
\nFebruary 14 – May 31, 2014
\nHKU Visitor Centre Gallery, Centennial Campus HKU
\nPart of \u201cOn the Urban Fringe: In Search of the Ideal City\u201d: a Collateral Exhibition of 2013 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism Architecture (Hong Kong) UABB (HK), http:\/\/uabb.hk\/ Co-curated by Melissa Cate Christ and Seth Denizen in collaboration with the Pokfulam Village Cultural Landscape Conservation Group and the HKU Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Centre. http:\/\/www.pokfulamvillage.com
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_photo_o.JPG\")
\nHKU Visitor Centre Opening Ceremony
\nFebruary 14, 2014 (Friday), 2:30pm
\nVisitor Centre, G\/F, Centennial Campus, HKU
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen_Shot_2014-02-27_at_10.30.21_PM_o.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nRoof Painting in Pokfulam Village<\/b>
\nDesigned by Melissa Cate Christ & Seth Denizen in collaboration with BALS3 students, and coordinated and supported by the Pokfulam Village Cultural Landscape Conservation Group, the Gallant Ho Experiential Learning Centre and the WAY Fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\t\tPrevious<\/a>
\n\t\t\/<\/span>
\n\t\tNext image<\/a><\/p>\n\n \t\t\t<\/p>\n\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen_Shot_2014-01-31_at_4.43.19_PM_o.png\")
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\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n\t\t\t<\/a> \n\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\t
\nOn the weekend of January 25th and 26th, 174 students from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) painted 50 rooftops in Pokfulam Village. Designed by HKU Landscape Architecture professors Melissa Cate Christ and Seth Denizen based on site and visual research gathered by their team of Bachelor of Landscape Architecture student research assistants and in collaboration with villagers, the project aimed to support the Pokfulam Village Landscape Conservation Group and the Caritas Pokfulam Community Development Project\u2019s efforts to co-build a sustainable community and advocate for the re-evaluation of the existing Squatter Control Policy.<\/p>\n
\nGrassroots Balloon Mapping of Pokfulam Village<\/b>
\nProject team: BALS3 student research assistants May Chan Ka Ying, Issac Chui Ho Wan, Natalie Law Wai Yan, Monique Wong Hui Yan, Olive Wong Lok Yan, and Tony Yuen Chun Yin.<\/p>\n
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen_Shot_2014-01-31_at_5.45.56_PM_o.png\")
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<\/p>\n
\nEnvisioning Pokfulam Village: A Rich Cultural Landscape<\/b> \u8584\u6276\u6797\u6751\uff1a\u7ba1\u5236\u4e0b\u7684\u591a\u5143\u751f\u6d3b\u7a7a\u9593<\/b>
\n2013 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism Architecture Hong Kong
\nDecember 20, 2013 – February 28, 2014
\nKwun Tong Ferry Pier, Kowloon
\nhttp:\/\/www.uabb.hk\/<\/a><\/p>\n
\n\u53c3\u5c55\u5718\u968a\uff1a\u8584\u6276\u6797\u6751\u6587\u5316\u74b0\u5883\u4fdd\u80b2\u5c0f\u7d44, \u9999\u6e2f\u5927\u5b78\u4f55\u8000\u68e3\u9ad4\u9a57\u5b78\u7fd2\u4e2d\u5fc3, \u9999\u6e2f\u5927\u5b78\u5efa\u7bc9\u5b78\u9662\u5712\u5883\u5efa\u7bc9\u5b78\u90e8<\/p>\n
\nThe naming of Pokfulam Village to the World Monuments Fund Watch List has drawn international attention to the threatened cultural heritage of this 280-year-old village. In the 1950s, there was a dramatic increase of population in Hong Kong, with many new immigrants squatting on land in and around the village. Over time, the newcomers and the villagers have formed a single community, retaining the local traditions of the original village. This exhibit seeks to highlight the rich cultural landscape of Pokfulam Village which has flourished in spite of the restrictions the Squatter Control Policy has imposed on its physical development.
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen_Shot_2014-01-03_at_1.34.59_AM_o.png\")
\nSquatter Control Policy<\/b>
\n“The Government conducted a territory-wide Squatter Structure Survey in 1982. The purpose was to freeze the number of squatter huts at that time. Surveyed squatter huts are still unauthorised structures though they are allowed to remain in existence on a temporary basis. In normal circumstances, surveyed squatter huts will be cleared when the areas in which they are located are included in development clearance programmes or environmental improvement programmes, or for safety reasons. As such, the Government does not encourage squatter hut residents to use permanent materials to rebuild or repair squatter huts<\/i>.\u201d
\n -Mrs. Carrie Lam, Secretary for Development, 7.7.2010, in Legco <\/p>\n
\n\u300c\u9999\u6e2f\u653f\u5e9c\u65bc\u4e00\u4e5d\u516b\u4e8c\u5e74\u5728\u5168\u9999\u6e2f\u5730\u5340\u9032\u884c\u5bee\u5c4b\u767b\u8a18\uff0c\u76ee\u7684\u662f\u51cd\u7d50\u7576\u6642\u7684\u5bee\u5c4b\u6578\u76ee\uff0c\u7372\u767b\u8a18\u7684\u5bee\u5c4b\u4ecd\u5c6c\u975e\u6cd5\u69cb\u7bc9\u7269\uff0c\u53ea\u662f\u300e\u66ab\u51c6\u5b58\u5728\u300f\u3002\u5728\u4e00\u822c\u7684\u60c5\u6cc1\u4e0b\uff0c\u5df2\u7372\u767b\u8a18\u7684\u5bee\u5c4b\u6703\u56e0\u8a72\u5bee\u5c4b\u6240\u5728\u5730\u88ab\u7d0d\u5165\u767c\u5c55\u6e05\u62c6\u8a08\u5283\u6216\u74b0\u5883\u6539\u5584\u8a08\u5283\uff0c\u6216\u56e0\u5b89\u5168\u56e0\u7d20\u7684\u60c5\u6cc1\u4e0b\u88ab\u6e05\u62c6\uff0c\u56e0\u6b64\u653f\u5e9c\u4e26\u4e0d\u9f13\u52f5\u5bee\u5c4b\u5c45\u6c11\u4ee5\u6c38\u4e45\u6027\u7269\u6599\u91cd\u5efa\u6216\u4fee\u847a\u5bee\u5c4b\u3002\u300d
\n – \u4e8cO\u4e00O\u5e74\u4e03\u6708\u4e03\u65e5\u7acb\u6cd5\u6703\u4e0a\u6642\u4efb\u767c\u5c55\u5c40\u5c40\u9577\u6797\u912d\u6708\u5a25\u767c\u8a00<\/p>\n
\nstep up!<\/b>
\na celebration of HK stairs through art, theatre, dance, design and community initiatives<\/i>
\nDecember 7-15, 2013
\nOpening tour by Melissa Cate Christ: December 7, 4pm
\nJoin me on a walk from Wan Chai’s Dominion Garden to Tai Ping Shan to tour the installations which are part of step up! and experience Hong Kong’s unique Stair Culture.
\nMore information on the installations and performances can be found at \nhttps:\/\/stepuphk.wordpress.com\/
\nhttps:\/\/stepuphk.wordpress.com\/” target=”_blank”>https:\/\/stepuphk.wordpress.com\/
\n<\/a> and on facebook<\/a>
\npart of very hong kong<\/a><\/p>\n
\nEXCESS launch<\/b>
\nWednesday, 27 November, 2013
\n6:30pm reception, 7-9pm discussion
\nBroadway Cinematheque (next to Kubrick Cafe and Bookstore), Foyer area on 1\/F
\nProsperous Garden, 3 Public Square Street, Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon
\nkubrick.com.hk<\/a>
\n![\"news](\"https:\/\/new.transversestudio.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/transverse\/4752349_Screen_Shot_2013-10-30_at_3.35.55_PM_o.png\")
\nTo celebrate the launch of SCAPEGOAT\u2019s 6th issue – Excess – please join us for a discussion with contributors Melissa Cate Christ and Seth Denizen, issue editor Etienne Turpin, and Hammad Nasar of the Asia Art Archive<\/p>\n
\nLauded as a luxury capital, with the world\u2019s highest per capita consumption rate of luxury goods thanks to Mainland Chinese tourists, Hong Kong is exemplary of the paradoxical relationship of excess and restriction. Haunted by myths of perpetual land scarcity, the valorization of imported goods, and a leisure culture of obsessive consumption, in Hong Kong land redevelopment policy and practice have prioritized revenue generation, shopping mall tourism and outdated models of public housing construction at the expense of both cultural and environmental heritage, and the potential for a more equitable, food-secure society.<\/p>\n
\nSCAPEGOAT<\/i>: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy is an independent, not-for-profit, bi-annual journal designed to create a context for research and development regarding design practice, historical investigation, and theoretical inquiry. As a mytheme, the figure of the scapegoat carries the burden of the city and its sins. Walking in exile, the scapegoat was once freed from the constraints of civilization. Today, with no land left unmapped, and with processes of urbanization central to political economic struggles, SCAPEGOAT<\/i> is exiled within the reality of global capital. The journal examines the relationship between capitalism and the built environment, confronting the coercive and violent organization of space, the exploitation of labour and resources, and the unequal distribution of environmental risks and benefits. Throughout our investigation of design and its promises, we return to the politics of making as a politics to be constructed. www.scapegoatjournal.org<\/a><\/p>\n
\nSCAPEGOAT<\/i> Issue 05 – Excess – Summer\/Fall 2013 Ours is unquestionably a time of excess. While currencies and commodities continue to circulate and reify segregation and inequality throughout the global political economy, excess leaks out in all directions, sometimes fostering movements of resistance,at other times permitting improvisational opportunism among often neglected actors, and still at other moments irrevocably damaging ecologies and environments which we humans precariously but ruthlessly inhabit. The pleasures and perils of excess cross divisions of class, race, gender and sexuality, while also reinforcing aspects of these and other identities. Can we design for, or among, the excess of contemporary culture? How do practices of architecture and landscape architecture, as well as adjacent practices of art, installation, theory, typography, suggest ways to amplify, capture, or redirect excess?<\/p>\n
\nSeth Denizen is a writer and landscape architect, currently teaching at the University of Hong Kong.
\nHammad Nasar is a writer, curator and the Head of Research and Programmes at the Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong.
\nEtienne Turpin is a writer and curator living and working in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is a founder and contributing editor of Scapegoat.<\/p>\n
\nWithout Exteriority\/Excessive Urbanism<\/b>
\nEXCESS launch: Shanghai
\nSaturday November 23
\n3-5pm discussion, 5-7 reception
\nShanghai Study Centre – more info \nhttp:\/\/ash.arch.hku.hk\/2013\/11\/20\/23-november-seminar-excessive-urbanism\/
\nhttp:\/\/ash.arch.hku.hk\/2013\/11\/20\/23-november-seminar-excessive-urbanism\/” target=”_blank”>here<\/a>
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\nWITHOUT EXTERIORITY: ARCHITECTURE AFTER THE URBAN-RURAL DICHOTOMY
\nBy 1973, Raymond Williams\u2019 The Country and the City had already located fundamental contradictions in the urban, academic image of rural life. For Williams, the rural was a myth functioning as a memory of the origins of the city; yet, despite his prescient analysis, the myth of a natural, conflict-free, rural space outside the city remains a compelling image even in our contemporary discourse. Following the continuing discussion of the rural-urban relation in China, initiated this year through the programming of the HKU Shanghai Study Center, this event introduces several new perspectives on architecture after the urban-rural divide.<\/p>\n
\nStudy Center Moderator _ Daan Roggeveen, director
\nGuest Moderator _ Xiaoyu Weng, writer and curator
\nParticipants _ Seth Denizen, contributor _ Melissa Cate Christ, contributor _ Etienne Turpin, editor<\/p>\n
\nMelissa will be an invited studio critic, giving her lecture “Food Security and the Commons: the role of Singapore”, and introducing the HKU MLA program at Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology.
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Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology
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Just another ‘hazy’ day in western-Central China!<\/p>\n
\nEnvisioning Pokfulam Village<\/b>
\nSunday, November 10, 2013
\nChoi Yuen Community Garden, Pokfulam Village <\/p>\n
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