HKU Division of Landscape Architecture
Spring 2023 Public Lecture Series
“ASSEMBLING FUTURES”
Heritage x Sustainability: A Territorial View
Lecture Abstract
Sustainability is at the nexus of people-place-planet. However, the conceptual and administrative silos that have been erected over the past century defy this holistic approach to managing urban and rural heritage. Challenges raised by climate change, large scale infrastructure development and natural disasters exacerbated by inept physical planning drive home the limitations of our current management system. The recent emphasis in international heritage practice on the synergies between nature and culture are chiseling away at these silos. This talk draws upon case studies from various heritage places around Southeast Asia to illustrate the importance of a territorial approach to understanding the socio-ecological mechanics of sustainability.
About the Speaker
Montira Horayangura Unakul specializes in the safeguarding and sustainable development of cultural heritage. She guided the development of UNESCO’s new Competence Framework for Cultural Heritage Management and plans for managing heritage, tourism and disaster risks at various World Heritage properties. She was trained in economics, East Asian studies, architecture and urban planning at Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley and Chulalongkorn University.
About “Assembling Futures”
The DLA 2022-23 Lecture Series “Assembling Futures” brings together distinguished academics and professionals in the fields of landscape architecture and heritage conservation to discuss recent works concerning environmental futures. Although landscape and heritage practices have long engaged with the regeneration of existing environments for future use, the precise relationships between such works and the future remain underexamined. Lectures in this series explore landscape architecture and heritage conservation as future-making practices that condition how future environments are managed, valued and imagined. By attending to how different projects reassemble the relationships between human and non-human agents and evolving socio-material engagements across different scales, the series encourages critical reflections on the competing visions of building future worlds in the face of growing uncertainty and unfolding environment crises.
This lecture is co-organized by the Division of Landscape Architecture at HKU, Docomomo Hong Kong, and the Built Heritage Research Collaborative, HKUrbanLabs, Faculty of Architecture, HKU.
This lecture is open to the general public. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
CPD Credit Hours and AIA CES Learning Unit Hours are offered to members of the HKILA.
CPD Credit Hours are offered to members of the HKICON.
An attendance record sheet will be provided at the venue entrances for members to register their attendance.
Please visit “Assembling Futures” for further information on the Public Lecture Series.