The Master of Design (Urban Environments Design) draws on the contemporary Hong Kong/China urban experience to offer a unique postgraduate education in urban space design. In line with the School’s human-centered critical approach to environment design, this studio-based specialism integrates the design of multiple scales and typologies of urban environments. Urban Environments Design focuses on the analysis and design of hybrid and composite interior environments, urban public spaces and urban systems and strategies.

Aim

This full-time international postgraduate programme responds to the unprecedented urban transformations occurring during the past few decades in Hong Kong and China. Urban Environments Design aims at the development of a high level of intellectual and practical mastery of the analysis and design of diverse urban environments in the region, with broader implications for urban contexts worldwide. The approach of the Urban Environments Design is based on an understanding of socio-cultural dynamics of the regional context transferred into new design strategies and design interventions.

Objectives

This specialism seeks to unite practical approaches for innovation in urban strategies with formal aspects of urban environment design, through:

• real-world project development
• teamwork approaches to problem solving
• socio-cultural and aesthetic considerations
• reflecting critically and analytically on the urban environment value creation by design within the urban environment
• a critical understanding of contemporary urban transformations in China
• definition of strategic approaches to urban environment design

Programme structure

Following an introductory seminar, which initiates students in the Urban Environments ethos and approach, the first year of the programme is structured around three half-semester studio subjects, each of which is paired with a seminar subject that pro- vides a knowledge base for the respective studio. Each project is undertaken in collaboration with a public- or private-sector partner, addressing spatial design challenges that emerge from the partner’s real-world operations and institutional culture. The final semester centers on a student-defined capstone design project that synthesises the learning of the programme.

Common Core Subject (compulsory) (1 credits)

• SD5400 Vision and Change (1 credit)

Specialism Core Subjects (compulsory)

• Theory/Method Subjects (8 credits)
• SD5701 Urban Ecology (2 credits)
• SD5702 The City from Inside (2 credits)
• SD5704 Public Realms (2 credits)
• SD5706 Strategic Approaches to the City (2 credits)

Workshop Subjects (12 credits)

• SD5703 Urban Interior Environment (4 credits)
• SD5705 Urban Public Space Design (4 credits)
• SD5707 Urban Systems and Strategies (4 credits)

Capstone Subjects (9 credits)

• SD5708 Capstone Research (3 credits)
• SD5709 Capstone Project (6 credits)

Elective Subjects (6 credits)

• 2 Electives from pool of shared MDes electives (3+3)