When wind blows, water rises...Bridging knowledge and practice

Every year for ‘PERCEPTION OF SPACE’, we adopt a colloquial idiom as the theme of the series. On one hand, being colloquial is being down-to-earth, for example, the theme of 2022 was ‘Clothing, Food, Shelter, and Transportation’, linking everyday spatial cognition and local construction. On the other hand, it’s easy to understand. No matter how scientific or profound the knowledge is, in the field of architecture, if it cannot be transformed into tangible everyday spaces, it can only be considered as mystifying or armchair strategizing.

The theme of this spring seminar series is ‘When wind blows, water rises...’, which originates from the simple cause-and-effect cognition of ‘wind’ and ‘water’ in natural phenomena. Over time, it has evolved into the ancient people’s consciousness of longing for and pursuing a comfortable, safe, and beautiful living environment. ‘Go with the flow’, ‘The water palace comes with the wind’, and others are practices where humans use wisdom to adapt and cleverly utilize nature for their own use. In today’s terms, it is the operation of borrowing power that is authentic, passive, and nearly zero energy consumption.

The Industrial Revolution, along with the accompanying infrastructure construction and urban development, has greatly changed the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, and also changed people’s geographical understanding of space. If the Industrial Revolution originated from the proactive consciousness and desire of humans to intervene and change the living environment, what was re-established is the ‘higher dimension’ of human ‘conquest’ of places and nature, in exchange for a more comfortable, safer, and ‘better’ living environment. However, if it were not for the repeated discussions in recent years about ‘carbon peak’, ‘carbon neutrality’, ‘zero energy consumption’, ‘green’, and ‘sustainable development’, as well as the increasingly severe climate change that we are experiencing, perhaps we would not be aware of the consequences and huge costs of ‘conquest’. But what do they mean for architects’ current spatial practice?

Voltaire once said, ‘When an avalanche occurs, no snowflake is innocent.’ We live on this vast and complex planet. When various disasters emerge and various hindsight cognitions and terms fill the daily life of designers, understanding them, finding the causal relationship between them, and then foreseeing and elegantly transforming them into a higher-dimensional balanced design to respond to the issues of this era, may become an unavoidable proposition for today’s architects.

The 2024 ‘PERCEPTION OF SPACE’ still starts from the origin of architectural design, taking the spatio-temporal interaction and game between people and places, and nature as the entry point, interpreting and discussing the reality, dilemma, and possible breakthroughs of spatial design from the two dimensions of knowledge and action.

This series is planned and academically hosted by Doreen Heng LIU, a specially-appointed professor at Shenzhen University and an architect. The seminar invited renowned scholars and practicing architects from both domestic and international to participate. The speakers include Jiat-Hwee Chang and Dorothy Tang from Singapore, Chatpong Chuenrudeemol and Jenchieh Hung from Thailand, John Lin from Hong Kong, China, and Feng Jiang, Huang Yinwu, Lin Jia, Mu Jun, Song Yehao, Ye Qing, and Zhang Dong who are active in the relevant academic and practical fields in China. This series consists of six seminars, and in each seminar, two keynote guests will share their practice and research around the topics of health, comfort, ecology, and sustainability, and initiate dialogue and discussion.

Perception of Space is a series of international forums initiated by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Laboratory at Shenzhen University. It is planned and hosted by Professor Liu Heng, inviting architects and scholars from both domestic and international, to engage in interdisciplinary dialogue with artists, sociologists, anthropologists, and geographers. It incorporates art, aesthetic education, and humanities into architectural education, exploring the future issues faced by architecture.

Hosted by:

School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shenzhen University

Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Laboratory

Supported by:

Original Design Research Center, Shenzhen University