Chu Hai is the oldest private institution in Hong Kong. She was founded in 1947 in Guangzhou, China, as "Chu Hai University." As a vibrant community of learning, we have served the local community and the neighbouring regions for the past 65 years. Our graduates have played significant roles in the educational, cultural and economic life of Hong Kong and overseas. Our goal is to nurture individuals not only as professionals but also, perhaps more importantly, as competent citizens with virtue. Many of our graduates have gone on to pursue postgraduate studies, or have led successful careers in various fields.
Phil Wong is apparently an outsider. There is a huge difference between contractors and architects. The difference doesnt lie on the meaningless HKIA licensing system. It depends on how well a person can build up one's knowledge abt architecture. Architecture has theories. The problem of HK architecture right now is tht many poor architects holding a so-called HKIA license but they didnt reli pay attention during class or simply they just slept in class throughout their Uni life. Even they hv the license, they are just a brunch of generic builders in my eyes. These are the real contractors cuz they just simply do whtever the clients want them to do. or they are just simply lazy and dun reli wanna think & dun reli wanna work. They just wanna get the cold hard cash and left. This is one of the major reasons why there are so many terrible architecture in HK.
I mean not only the gov, but also ourselves as the public. The public realm has to trained thier architectural eyes too. if not, even we have good architecture, it becomes meaningless as well if we dont have the good audience/clients
Lop Muy. 1. first of all, I agree with the pt about the works of chu hai are far below standard at the moment. But their faculty has only been set up not long ago. It took a half century of time for hku to develop to this stage. (PS. hku is also a shit school before Ralph Learner became the dean. but sadly, he passed away in 2011.) Chu hai faculty just needs more time to develop on both teaching and learning sides. 2. Where you work doesnt reli matter at all even if it is shopping mall. A gd architect can work anywhere still comes up with gd works. However, if a person who has a only reli poor ideology in mind, one would still produce so-so works no matter how nice studio space provided. London AA doesnt even have a proper studio space. it just holds just several blocks of building, which ought to be typical london houses in bedford aquare. but they can still produce impressive works and trained great architects. 3. degree show is always an eye candy show. only those visually pleasing projects are shown. taking out those eye candy, the projects left with little. those kind of projects are empty in a way if u look closely enough.4. HKIA is an organisation controlled and governed by a group of elderly with conservative minds. They dun want changes and actually they are afraid of changes.This is simply because they hv lost their passion towards architecture. They just wanna keep their jobs. They are timid and how would they dare to accredit a new school? Any thing has the word 'new' is kinda too much for them. HKIA only likes to make destructive decision. If it wasnt tht hkia wanna create conflict with RIBA, how would all the undergrad programme is not accredited as RIBA part 1 right now. RIBA was actually ok to continue the accreditation back in tht time. It was HKIA which always wanna make things worse just to keep the stable job positions they were hving.
KENNETH CHOW agree with you on most of the points ... but not too sure about AA really ! feel like architecture became a luxurious art works ... where ideas over reality
Hunter Roland btw, I dun deny i m more a theorist. and to be honest, 'whts 'reality'' is a debatable philosophical question. just yur definition of 'reality' seems not quite close to mine. have you ever thought of people can actually inhabit in the ideological space in a drawing? perceptionally,and conceptionally. the idea of space can be reli broad. there is not only external built space, but also our inner mental space. Architecture can be anything. dun limit yurself too much. :) It depends on what kind of project you choose to work on as an architect. What kind of client u pick and wht kind of project u choose. u always have a choice. after all, it is all abt making choices, isnt it? This is wht design s roughly about. lol Also, the pedagogy of a lot of schools at the moment only focuses on the 'reality' u mentioned. However, their students will only know how to build. But they dun know why and what to be built. This is problematic. this is also the reason why hk has so much poor architecture. at the end, these schools only trained a brunch of builders, but they are not reli architects to me. They didnt fundamentally think, question, and critique the architectural culture. How could this possibly alter the status quo if hk is in the hands of all these ppl. A person who knows how to build in real doesnt necessarily mean he or she can make architecture. It may be merely a generic building. There is a difference between a building and architecture. Some of the schools which are so called famous in design can also hv students who are doing pretty generic thesis tht is not intellectual/inspiring at all. Filling up the whole walls with large drawings which seems like buildable doesnt mean the project is good. It could be a boring generic project. For example, Hk architects are all capable to build and they all pass the HKIA exams. Firesafety, structure, services..etc. All those papers tht they have gone through. According to your hypothesis, Hk architecture should have been pretty awesome and should be pretty well-known worldwide by now. But is this reli the case? Have you heard of a friend of yours telling you tht the hk architectural design is pretty awesome? TBH. there is something I dun like abt the AA too. But as a more mature student, u can always choose to agree or disagree with wht yur tutor/ critics say. it is not like someone says yur project needs to be more 'real' then u make it more 'real'., vice versa. just do wht u truely believe in. Architecture is made out of all different kinds of 'religions'. pick the one u wanna believe in and just work on it. However, I just wanna add a question here. What is the necessity of making it more 'real' when it is an academic project which not meant to be built anyway? I just think it would be more meaningful to explore the intellectual aspect of the project, as u will not have another chance to reli do tht when u get into practice(the 'real' world). Why not grasp this valuable opportunity when we are still in school? The precious freedom and time tht the academia can offer us is going to be something all of us will reli miss after we get into the 'real' world for a while. When a person can imagine he or she is going to revise I-beams and footings everyday in an office for the next 30 years, why would tht person like to start doing tht in his/her 20s? Why not do something different? Time will not go back. There is not going to be a 2nd chance. If a person reli interested in the 'reality' u talked abt, well..ya...go for it.. just go ahead to revise the I-beam and footings. diu!
Jasmine . How you justify what you learn at Chu Hai Architecture is comparable to CUHK HKU Architecture? Have you ever visited the graduation show held by these school and look at their exhaustive works and efforts ? Comparatively by situating the studio in a sunken shopping mall? Sorry I never seen this before in Knowles Building HKU as well as An Integrated Teaching Building CUHK. From my observation, the quality and quantity of works produced by Chu Hai Architecture are far below the standard , and thus HKIA does not accredited the degree of architecture as equivalent to the mentioned universities.
