Hong Kong architect Weijen Wang appointed spring 2023 Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice
The Department of Architecture has appointed Weijen Wang as the Spring 2023 Friedman Visiting Professor of Practice. Wang, who earned a master’s of architecture from UC Berkeley, is Design Director of the Hong Kong-based design firm Wang Weijen Architecture and Professor of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.
With an active teaching and design practice in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, Wang is a leading architect, scholar, and educator shaping the culture of architecture in the Asia Pacific region. He is renowned for integrating design practice and research, and for his cultural advocacy promoting social architecture, urban fabric, public space, and practices for a sustainable environment.
At Berkeley, Wang will be teaching Arch 202: Adaptive Tower: Typology for Urban Campus Architecture. In February he will deliver a public lecture entitled “Courtyardism: An Urban Rural Strategy” as part of the Department of Architecture Lecture Series.
Weijen Wang Architecture was founded in San Francisco in 1994 before moving to Hong Kong. The firm focuses on social architecture, practices for a sustainable environment, and the integration of buildings with urban space and local culture. Wang’s critical design approach adapts the traditional Chinese courtyard typology for contemporary high-density urban contexts.
This urban “courtyardism” successfully creates multiple levels of sky gardens, patios, and transitional indoor/outdoor spaces. These new spatial forms moderate an intermediate scale that incorporates dense urban settings with their natural landscapes and community fabric, facilitating lighting and natural ventilation, and creating microclimates of thermal comfort for the region’s hot climate.
Over the past 30 years, Wang has completed projects across Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Vietnam. The firm’s award-winning projects have been invited for exhibition in Hong Kong, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Tokyo, Krakow, and Venice, including at the Venice Biennale International Architecture, Hong Kong Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Shenzhen B-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Beijing Architecture Biennale, and the Taipei Museum of Modern Art.
With an active teaching and design practice in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan, Wang is a leading architect, scholar, and educator shaping the culture of architecture in the Asia Pacific region.
Wang’s design rigor in dense urban conditions is illustrated by Kenneth Frampton in his Modern Architecture: A Critical History, Part IV: World Architecture and Modern Movement (Thames & Hudson 2020).
Wang holds M.S. and B.S. degrees from National Taiwan University and an M.Arch. from UC Berkeley. He was an associate at TAC San Francisco before he joined the University of Hong Kong. He was head of the department of architecture at HKU between 2011 to 2016, and in 2016 was named the Andrew KF Lee Professor in Architectural Design.
Weijen Wang’s leadership in advocating for architectural culture is demonstrated in his role as curator for the 2018 Venice Biennale International Architecture Hong Kong Pavilion, as well as for the 2007 Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. His extensive research, writing, and designs have been published in Domus, Mark, Stradt Bauwelt, AJ,T+A, TA, WA, UED, A+U, Dialogue, ArchiDaily, Dozeen, and Archiposition; books including Refabricating City: A Reflection, (Oxford University Press) and Regenerating Patio: Studies of Macau Historical Urban Fabric; as well as the monographs Wang Weijen’s Urban Courtyardism (Urban Environment Design, 2011), Architecture World (2014), and Taiwan Architecture (2011 and 2018).