Liquid Homes is a research, curatorial, and design collaboration about the culture of Tanka (Cantonese boat people) and their fluid state of living and building in Hong Kong fishing villages. Between the seams of land and water, trajectories that this project take are idiosyncratic, through the villages as ecological territories, houses as amphibious species, and homes as liquid bodies.
Liquid Homes is a research, curatorial, and design collaboration about the culture of Tanka (Cantonese boat people) and their fluid state of living and building in Hong Kong fishing villages. Between the seams of land and water, trajectories that this project take are idiosyncratic, through the villages as ecological territories, houses as amphibious species, and homes as liquid bodies.
Inspired by this fluid state of being, the project draws on the format of “floating exhibition” in collaboration with emerging designers and curatorial practices across and beyond the Greater Bay Area. Archiving as research, curating as construction, exhibiting as viewing, cataloging as critical discourse, the project searches for a possible design technique that is unique to the Area, accompanied by a part tour guide, part architectural manual, part storybook publication.
Su Chang is an architect, occasional writer and curator. His built work and architectural proposals situate historical typologies in contemporary cultures, focusing on how architecture and landscape can intersect to create space in between for new public life.
Chang’s writing and translation work similarly connects architecture’s physical presence to its participation in a larger geography of ideas, most recently in the Chinese edition of Iñaki Ábalos’s The Good Life: A Guided Visit to the Houses of Modernity, as well as essays, interviews, commentaries, and projects in Wallpaper, Taiwan Architecture, and Harvard GSD Platform.
Chang received his Master in Architecture with commendation and Dean’s Merit Scholarship from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Previously, Chang was educated at Peking University, ETH Zürich, and received a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies with First Class Honour and full scholarship from the University of Hong Kong.