About
My research focuses on unpacking architectural-environmental discourses, in particular how the states mobilise architecture and town planning to control the subjects. My monograph Inventing the Built Environment and my current research on the Department of the Environment (U.K.) consider this question at the national and central governmental levels. My survey of the disappeared Vietnamese refugee camps in Hong Kong, in contrast, asks questions about who can become citizens and who was excluded. Currently, I am completing a Leverhulme-Trust-funded research (2024-2025) into social housing and neoliberal states, which carries forward these inquiries in Southeast Asian context. I also integrate this query in my teaching, through examining how architectural schools and universities prepare their graduates as part of the state/ imperial apparatus.
At the LSA, I am the co-champion of the School's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group since 2021. I embedded EDI pursuits in my teaching, including using Liverpool and the LSA's (post)colonial legacies to re-examine modern architecture and town planning.
I am trained as an architect and have worked as a strategic planner and architectural designer in London, Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, and Shenzhen. In 2011 to 2015, as a design fellow at Urbanus (Hong Kong/ Shenzhen), I led several large-scale design projects including Shum Yip Upperhills Loft. My experience in practice has informed my research interest in land rights and planning issues in China and Hong Kong.
EDUCATION BACKGROUND
PhD in History of Design, Royal College of Art
M.Arch I, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia University
BA (Architectural Studies), University of Hong Kong