Hong Kong as an Archetype: Revisiting Modernist Ideas of the City and its Urban Forms

Comparing Hong Kong, Beijing urbanism
2014-15 M+ / Design Trust Fellow Ling Fan shares his research result in a public talk.
Ling Fan (M+ / Design Trust Research Fellow 2014–15), Remo Riva (Director, P&T Group), Tang Keyang (Associate Professor, School of Arts, Renmin University of China) and Cole Roskam (Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong)
2015 M+ / Design Trust Fellow Ling Fan sharing his research result in a public lecture.

2015 M+ / Design Trust Research Fellow Ling Fan’s research aims to recuperate the idea of the ‘Chinese city’ as a modernist project that began in the 1940s by conceptualising it according to two extreme logics: one driven primarily by political power, as exemplified by Beijing, and the other being propelled by economic power, as in Hong Kong. The dialectics between Hong Kong and Beijing, representing the economic and the political, introduces an archetypal contrast that will appear and reappear throughout China’s recent history of urban development in ever-new incarnations. In this context, Fan will examine how Hong Kong, coming from its own, unique geopolitical situation, represents a critical passage for understanding the emergence of the contemporary ‘Chinese city.’

The M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship programme consists of two separate fellowships investigating issues related to architecture and design. One supports research projects focused on Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area in an Asian or global context, and the second supports research projects related to Asia more broadly, closely in line with the curatorial position of M+, the Hong Kong museum dedicated to visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

More details about M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship here

M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship 2014-15 Public Talk

Date: 24 November 2015 (Tuesday)

Time: 7pm – 8:30pm

Venue: agnès b. CINEMA, Hong Kong Arts Centre, 2 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

Speaker:

Ling Fan (M+ / Design Trust Research Fellow 2014–15)

Moderator:

Cole Roskam (Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong)

Panel Discussants:

Remo Riva (Director, P&T Group)

Tang Keyang (Associate Professor, School of Arts, Renmin University of China)

Organised by M+ and in collaboration with Design Trust

More details about M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship 2014-15 Public Talk here

2015

Fellow: Ling Fan

Ling Fan is a speculative designer, educator and urban entrepreneur. Trained as an architect, he works at the boundaries of architecture, design, urban theory and media technology. He is the co-founder of Tezign Tech & Design, a startup bridging creative talents with real-world social and business problems. In addition, he founded FANStudio in 2010, a practice straddling art and architecture, and was the Founding Innovation Director of C-Pod (Crystal Platform for Open Design), the design think tank for Crystal CG, from 2008-10. Fan currently teaches architecture, media art, human-environment interaction, urbanism and interdisciplinary design at China Central Academy of Fine Arts and the University of California at Berkeley.

Fan has received numerous awards, including the ‘Contemporary Young Art Criticism’ prize from Art Observation journal; the ‘Focus on Talent Award’ from the Martell Art Foundation and Today Art Museum; and the ‘National Art Special Project’ grant from the China National Scholarship Council. His work has been exhibited at prestigious events and fairs including Beijing Design Week, the Gwangju Biennale, Shanghai Art and Design Biennale, and Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale. Fan received a Doctor of Design from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, a Master of Architecture from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Tongji University. Fan’s Fellowship is also supported by Spring Workshop, a non-profit arts space in Hong Kong committed to an international cross-disciplinary program of artist and curatorial residencies, exhibitions, music, film and talks.

Organisation: M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, Design Trust

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, we are building one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. Our aim is to create a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometer waterfront promenade.

About Design Trust
Design Trust was established in 2014 by Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, a registered charity in Hong Kong since 2007, as a grant-funding platform. Design Trust supports creative projects that develop expertise and build research initiatives and content related to Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Working across a multiplicity of design disciplines, from graphics, media, and architecture to the built environment, Design Trust aims to actively accelerate creative research, design, and the development of meaningful projects that advocate for the positive role of design.