One of CUHK’s projects builds research on adaptable urban furniture and transformable installations
Urbanism\Architecture Biennale spotlights pioneering projects from CUHK
14 January 2026
CUHK scholars have participated in the 2025 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, showcasing their projects that reflect on the rise of artificial intelligence in urban design and the challenges it poses to the profession through interactive display and installations.
Running from 27 November 2025 to 24 January 2026, the biennale, co-curated by Dr Jimmy Ho Tsz-wai from the School of Architecture, features three teams composed of CUHK researchers in architecture, fine arts and cultural studies, at Oi! Street Art Space in North Point.
Under the theme “Techformance”, the biennale examines how emerging tools – generative design algorithms and robotics to immersive media – are reshaping architectural authorship, spatial experience and public engagement. The exhibitions, held in North Point and also the newly opened East Kowloon Cultural Centre, invite the public to co-create, reinterpret memory, and prototype new urban futures.
One of the CUHK projects is “Flower Market Imaginaries” curated by Ecologies of Participation, a transdisciplinary research initiative that explores creative and technological practices in urban space. It is a collaboration by Assistant Professor of Fine Arts Yim Sui-fong, Research Assistant Professor of Architecture Melody Yiu Hoi-lam and Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies Ashley Wong Lee.
The work presents an exploration of the popular flower market in Prince Edward, a site at risk from urban regeneration. This display features a multi-layered archive of community memories, using field recordings, AI, and 3D technologies. It also includes a virtual-reality experience of a historic flower shop, where visitors are invited to contribute their own memories.
Another project by the CUHK School of Architecture is “Reimagining breeze Blocks: An Algorithmic Evolution for Hong Kong’s Modern Architectural Heritage” by Professor Hiroyuki Shinohara and team. It analyses these elegant, perforated blocks – an iconic feature in some Hong Kong buildings – to quantify their effects on thermal comfort, light, and privacy. It creates prototypes with modifiable parameters and uses them in designing a wall installation, allowing visitors to step in and experience the ambience.
The third exhibition “Flux: Co-Assembled Adaptive Furniture for Divergent Environments, Enhanced by AI-Assisted Feedback Loop” by Dr Pedram Ghelichi and team is a collaboration between CUHK and Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen. It presents an adaptive furniture system for public spaces. Its modular components can be easily reconfigured by visitors for sitting, collaboration, and play. An integrated, AI-assisted feedback loop uses anonymised pose detection to analyse how people interact with the different arrangements.
The exhibitions are part of a dual-city exhibition, with Shenzhen presenting its own edition under the theme “City Theatre” through parallel programming.
