Workers in Hong Kong made plastic flowers, incense before that, and consumer goods throughout the city's provincial, Imperial, and colonial periods. Kowloon Peninsula's deep harbour and proximity to shipping lanes gave rise to exportoriented industries long before imperialistic conflicts changed their ownership from Chinese to British, and back again. Making things in this context served to define self-motivated enterprise. Hong Kong Chinese people made most of their export goods following a low material investment, labour-intensive model. Workers hand-painted ceramics and toys more often than their employers invested in better plant to replace their work.

Raw bamboo, a biomass building material with ecological degradability and rapid growth, is crucial for promoting a circular economy and sustainable environments. However, its non-standard nature limits standardized design and mass production. To overcome this, our study introduces a modular bamboo design workflow utilizing digital design technology to address geometric variability. The workflow incorporates 3D scanning to convert raw bamboo forms into precise geometric data, analyze their geometric parameters and connection methods for modular design, and apply discrete–topological shape-finding and aggregation for iterative optimization in batch production. We explore how XR assists in visualizing bamboo furniture designs, the benefits of 3D scanning, discrete design principles, and strategies for material integration. Our methodology includes material analysis, form finding, optimization, and a parametric workflow to enhance adaptability and innovation. The process covers 3D scanning raw bamboo, designing discrete units and connection rules, and aggregating units via topological optimization. This study highlights how modern digital technologies and innovative methodologies can enhance bamboo furniture design. These approaches promote more effective and diverse solutions while addressing the inherent limitations of the material.

Boundaries are spaces of contestation and encounter. When considering contemporary architecture in the global South, particularly in Africa, these spaces of encounter are especially pronounced. There is a body of architectural work in Africa produced by architects who are crossing physical boundaries between the global North and the global South, and the boundaries between global and local ways of making; some of them have also begun to blur the boundaries between the digital and the analogue. Drawing on previous empirical research in Africa, and building on literature about deborderisation, hybridisation, and tectonics, the space of encounter is positioned as a necessary and productive one. Analysis of representative building case studies in three African countries shows how architects are combining global and local tectonics in an effort to engage with social, economic, and environmental limitations. This can be read as a conscientious objection to reckless technological production that is, at times, ignorant of both local conditions and the planetary resource limitations that the world is facing. This paper will argue that the shift towards the tectonic hybridisation of computational design and digital fabrication with the use of local materials, traditions, and skills can further contribute towards this engagement. It emphasises the importance of tectonic ethics as a prerequisite for more equitable forms of exchange and encounter when working across boundaries, and it demonstrates how hybrid tectonics is a potentially useful and transferable strategy to begin to address some of these limitations.

This paper discusses a digital conservation project in Tai O Village, Hong Kong. The research initiative uses a combined LiDAR and photogrammetry scanning technology to document a sample of architecturally distinct stilt houses in Tai O. These buildings support intangible cultural heritage of Tanka fishing culture, and are themselves tangible cultural heritage that is under threat of degradation or possible clearance in the future. This paper presents an effort to digitally preserve physical conditions in twenty of Tai O’s stilt houses, and discusses the steps and considerations of researchers’ digital conservation workflow. The paper contributes to scholarship as a description of a conservation process in a unique and threatened context, and as an advancement of digital documentation and conservation techniques for threatened architecture.

This paper discusses spatial agency practice within a living lab in Hong Kong. Lab members work in Tai O Village, a historic fishing settlement receiving increased attention due to remnant vernacular housing there. The article presents historical and policy context for ongoing casework conducted with stakeholders in Tai O. It presents Tai O’s history in brief, recent policy developments, and inherent conflicts arising from the interaction of the two. The third section of the article describes informal settlement land tenure conflicts as historical phenomena in Hong Kong. The paper follows this case-specific discussion with global literature review of selected regularisation and settlement upgrading efforts from around the world. These reviews present the article’s thesis that third sector and design-led efforts are critically applicable methods to address informal settlement conflicts that remain due to colonial legacy policies and political inertia. The final section of the article presents ongoing living lab research and initiatives, including collaborative monitoring projects and strategic development proposals. Each living lab initiative presented elaborates the article’s thesis on the interaction between architecture, research, and governance to negotiate complex development transitions. The article contributes to architectural scholarship by summarising unique interactions between history, policy, economics, and demography that engendered the development situation in Tai O. Further, it reflects upon response development methods through architectural science and spatial agency practice, including the role of architectural representation products and discursive distinctions at boundaries between architectural practice and spatial agency practice.