CONVERSATION

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Chi Yan Chan, Assoc. AIA

Director, COLLECTIVE / Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Architecture, CUHK

Chi Yan Chan is a Director at COLLECTIVE. She holds a B.A. in Architecture degree from Princeton, an M. Arch. from Harvard GSD and is an Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). She is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, CUHK, co-teaching a Master’s Architecture Design Studio with fellow COLLECTIVE Directors Betty Ng and Juan Minguez.

Chi Yan has more than 15 years of professional experience at various award-winning firms in the United States and China, including Neri & Hu in Shanghai, Zephyr Architects in Beijing, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, BRB and Agrest & Gandelsonas Architects in New York City.

Prior to joining COLLECTIVE in 2019, Chi Yan was at Herzog & de Meuron, eventually leading a team as Project Manager for the design and construction of the Tai Kwun Center for Heritage and Arts, from 2009 to 2018. In 2017 to 2018, she was a Resident Site Architect for the construction of the M+ Museum in Kowloon.

Shannon Ho, AIA, HKIA
Executive Director, Aedas

Shannon Ho is an Executive Director at Aedas, where she works on a diverse range of projects, including Integrated Resorts, high-end hospitality, retail, large-scale commercial, and complex infrastructure developments. Shannon has extensive experience in her role as an executive architect to oversee and develop designs from feasibility to realization. Shannon attained her architectural degree from McGill University in Canada and practiced architecture in Chicago before attaining her professional license.

Shannon is passionate about charitable work and giving back to society and currently serves as Chairlady of the Lighthouse Club Hong Kong Branch, a non-profit organization that supports the construction industry by promoting fellowship among its members and providing assistance to individuals in need within the industry. Additionally, she is the Vice President of the AIA Hong Kong Chapter.

Charlotte Lafont-Hugo

Director, BEAU ARCHITECT / Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, HKU

Charlotte Lafont-Hugo is a practicing architect and teacher. She studied in France and Belgium, obtaining her Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) degree from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble (ENSAG) in 2008, her Master in Architecture (M.Arch.) from the Faculté d’Architecture La Cambre-Horta in 2011, and has been based in Hong Kong since 2012. In 2014, she co-founded, with Gilles Vanderstocken, BEAU Architects, a Hong Kong-based studio exploring the notions of context, programme, materiality, and construction. Their body of work displays an expressive austerity, primarily questioning the relationship between objectives and the means to achieve them – recently culminating in experiments in construction methods and adaptive reuse. For the last ten years, Charlotte has been a regular guest at numerous architecture-related events and educational institutions. Since 2022, she has taught an M.Arch. studio on adaptive reuse at the HKU Faculty of Architecture together with Gilles Vanderstocken, as well as a separate studio exploring construction and material intelligence.

Shirley Surya

Curator, Design and Architecture, M+

Shirley Surya is Curator, Design and Architecture, at M+, Hong Kong. Since 2012, she has contributed to building the M+ Collections through her research on design and architectural production across Mainland China and Southeast Asia. At M+, she co-curated Building M+: The Museum & Architecture Collection (2013), In Search of Southeast Asia Through the M+ Collections (2018), and the museum's opening exhibition Hong Kong: Here and Beyond and Things, Spaces, Interactions. She was also the co-curator of I. M. Pei’s first institutional retrospective I. M. Pei: Life is Architecture, which opened in late June 2024

Ida Sze, HKIA

Partner, Ida & Billy Architects

Ida Sze obtained her Master of Architecture degree from CUHK. She first worked in both the private and public sectors in Hong Kong, then at Steven Holl Architects in Beijing, and Herzog & de Meuron in Basel. She founded Ida & Billy Architects with Billy Chan in 2013 and the studio’s first project, The Bridged House, received the Japan Good Design Award, the HKIA President’s Prize and a Global Design Award. Their sustainable washroom series also received several international awards and in 2018, Ida & Billy Architects were recognised by Wallpaper* Magazine as one of the 20 Emerging Architects from Around the World.

Ida & Billy aim to resolve problems and create architectural interest "out of simplicity and an integrated whole". Nature, Art and Humanity are the fundamental elements of their projects. Ida also has a deep interest in Architecture for Life and Death, as the most primitive and pure architecture to address the inner self. This was manifested in her design for the Wo Hop Shek Columbarium during her early work with the Hong Kong Architectural Services Department (ArchSD).

Dr. Ying Zhou, Assoc. AIA

Associate Professor, Department of Architecture, HKU

Born in Shanghai, Ying Zhou holds a B.S.E. in Architecture and Engineering from Princeton, an M.Arch. from the Harvard GSD, a Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), and she was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Stuttgart. She has taught and practiced in New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Detroit, Boston and Basel.

Ying joined the faculty of architecture at the University of Hong Kong in 2016. Her expertise is at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and the visual arts. Her current research investigates the art ecologies manifested in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Singapore’s art spaces and she also researches and writes about heritage conservation, adaptive reuse, gentrification and creative cities. Her research and teaching questions how the processes and pathways for creating built environments manifest the larger relationships between urban restructurings, new economies, and governance systems, particularly in East Asian cities.

Prior to her move to Hong Kong, she taught about and researched contemporary cities at the ETHZ. She was also a lecturer and researcher with Kees Christiaanse at the Future Cities Laboratory (FCL), Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC), 2011-2015, where she focused on how contemporary urban developments impact cultural institutions in East Asian city centres, and with Herzog & de Meuron at ETH Studio Basel, 2007-2011, where she taught urban research on Kolkata, Damascus and Cairo and produced a book about MetroBasel.

MODERATOR

Betty Ng, Intl. Assoc. AIA,,RIBA, RA (NL)
Founder, COLLECTIVE / Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Architecture, CUHK

Betty Ng is the Founder of and a Director at COLLECTIVE. She is a Registered Architect in the Netherlands, an RIBA Chartered Architect in the United Kingdom and an International Associate member of the AIA. Betty holds a B. Arch. degree from Cornell University and an M. Arch. from the Harvard GSD. She is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), co-teaching a Master of Architecture Design Studio with COLLECTIVE Directors Chi-Yan Chan and Juan Minguez. Betty is currently a Committee Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Hong Kong Chapter, a member of the Nominating Committee of the AIA Hong Kong Chapter, a Member of the International Women’s Forum, a Fellow of the 2024 Class of the Aspen Institute's China Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Prior to setting up COLLECTIVE, Betty was the Design Director at OMA Rotterdam, with Pritzker Prize Laureate Rem Koolhaas, where she co-led the winning proposal for the Axel Springer Media Headquarters in Berlin, and many other projects. Earlier, she was involved at OMA Beijing and Hong Kong working on the CCTV Headquarters interiors and the 42 hectare West Kowloon Cultural District Master Plan in Hong Kong. Prior to coming to Asia, Betty was at OMA New York working on Milstein Hall, the extension of the Architecture School Building, Sibley Hall, at Cornell University, and on a 214-meter tall mixed-use tower, Museum Plaza, in Louisville, Kentucky. Betty has also practiced at Herzog & de Meuron in Basel and Massimiliano Fuksas in Rome.

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COLLECTIVE

COLLECTIVE is based in Hong Kong, with team members in London, Madrid, and Perth. The firm is globally oriented while strongly rooted in Asia. Founded in 2015 by Betty Ng, co-directed by Chi Yan Chan and Juan Minguez, COLLECTIVE builds on the international experiences of the Directors, who have previously practiced in senior positions at the Pritzker Prize-winning studios of Rem Koolhaas/OMA and Herzog & de Meuron.

COLLECTIVE is a research and concept-driven practice that offers powerful narratives based on Clarity, Beauty, and Function. Design is practiced as a Methodology rather than as a Style.

ROCCO DESIGN ARCHITECTS

Rocco Design Architects is a Chinese architectural practice based in Hong Kong. Working in a region with disparate cultural and physical landscapes, and where values from diverging times and places converge, Rocco Design’s work is grounded in the belief that architecture is the embodiment of culture – embracing and reinterpreting the past, as well as addressing modernity – and the requirements of contemporary living.

Apart from Principal, Rocco Yim, the firm currently has five Directors and about 140 staff with offices in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Their works have been awarded both locally and overseas, including a First Prize Award for the L’Opéra de la Bastille international competition in 1983, ARCASIA Gold Medals in 1994 and 2003, the Chicago Athenaeum Architectural Awards in 2006, 2011, 2013 and 2016, the Kenneth F. Brown Award in 2007, the World Architecture Festival category winner in 2011 and two Lu Ban Awards in 2017. The firm has exhibited four times in the Venice Biennale over the last decade and held its first solo exhibition at the Berlin Aedes Gallery in 2015.

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