HKU Division of Landscape Architecture
Spring 2023 Public Lecture Series
“ASSEMBLING FUTURES”
Lecture Title: Conserving the Indigenous Water System in Rural China
Speaker: Chuo Li, Department of Landscape Architecture at Mississippi State University
Discussant: Cecilia L. Chu, Division of Landscape Architecture, University of Hong Kong
Date: 22 February, 2023 (Wednesday)
Time: 7:00 – 8:30pm
Venue: Online via Zoom
Registration: Click Here
Lecture Abstract:
Rapid economic development and population growth combined with urbanization and changes of industrial and agricultural practices have considerably modified indigenous water systems in rural China. By focusing on the historical evolvements and challenges in using and conserving the traditional water system in the village of Hongcun in Anhui Province, China, this study reveals the multiple ecological, social and cultural frames that have shaped the development of the indigenous waterscape. It emphasizes that a holistic approach to landscape conservation with integrated natural and cultural constructs can facilitate a meaningful change towards sustainable land use and resilient water management in the rural village. Continued investments in tourism and urban infrastructure should be challenged by a comprehensive development model that places a higher priority on sustainable goals that would support the village and help it to endure and flourish in the future.
About the Speaker:
Chuo Li is an associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture at Mississippi State University. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include cultural landscape studies, landscape history, and built environment impact on human health. She has published her research in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of Urban Design, Journal of Landscape Architecture, Cities, and Landscape Research.—
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, at HKU. It is free and open to the public.
For further information, please visit the website of HKU: www.arch.hku.hk