CCHU9023 “Shaping the Landscape” is a Common Core Course at the University of Hong Kong. Each year, undergraduate students who take part in the course explore human’s changing relationships with nature through collaborative and site-specific art. In the process, student artists are fully immersed in the histories and context of site in order to conceive works of art that arise from this immersion. The series of artwork will capture the phenomenological qualities of the site, picking up from local materiality, colour and textures, light and wind, and site histories.

In the past three years, “Shaping the Landscape” has worked and exhibited in Pokfulam, Lei Yue Mun, and Lam Tsuen. This October, students worked in the Village of Lai Chi Wo.

Settled in the North-eastern part of Hong Kong, the indigenous village of Lai Chi Wo in Hong Kong has a rich setting that manifests how culture has been working with nature.

First settled by the Hakkas, the choice of the village’s location and siting in the surrounding landscapes show the settlers’ wisdom of how to work with nature. The fengshui woodland, the farm fields, and the nearby water streams, all become integral to this village spatial and living setting. The village configuration of row houses also responds to the gentle slope at the foothill, and also manifests a certain cultural understanding of hierarchy and order.

Inspired by the strong evidence of the inter-connectedness between human and nature in this village, we take this village as our project site, exploring how nature and culture are shaping the landscape of this place through art works.