Lectures Design Studios Capstone Projects
Design Studios
2025-2026
2025-1016 MArch Advanced Architectural Design Studio
Studio Instructor: Jiaxiu Cai
Teaching Assistant: Yanyu Sun
This studio works in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) as a living, water-driven territory rather than a single site. The site is located in the West River (Xijiang) of PRD. We treat the West River Territory as a complex system of water, logistics, governance, industry, and everyday life. Instead of designing isolated buildings, students develop “Delta Plug-ins”: spatial tools and prototypes that operate across scales, from architectural fragments to regional infrastructures. The aim is to position architecture as an active agent within larger territorial processes, where it responds to seasonal flooding, port transformation, shifting industrial geographies, and forms of water heritage that continue to organise life in the delta.
Research Question
Following Han Meyer’s approach, the studio draws on Complex System Theory to understand the interaction between design and spatial planning in delta contexts (Meyer, 2014). Urbanization in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is seen as an interplay between local processes and strategic development shaped by multiple actors and stakeholders. In this planning-oriented context, we ask: Where do architects intervene in this multi-scalar and multi-actor process?
Architecture in the PRD is inherently connected to public authorities, engineering consultants, and communities. Students are encouraged to explore how architecture can position itself as an active agent within this network to produce systematic responses.
Phase 1 - Collective Mapping and Researching
Phase 2 - Collective Exhibition: relationships between Delta Plugins and the Collective Vision
Coming Soon....