Architectural education has long perpetuated the misconception that the design phase is where all creative agencies reside, and that it is mostly an individual effort. This worldview simplifies the making and performance phases to a mere aftermath of 'architectural concepts' and reduces building use as a static, predetermined activity, where occupants are expected to simply fit into finished spaces. Categorical thinking of this kind segregates design, construction, and performance into discrete phases of 'design first, build second, then plan performance,' which fundamentally underestimates architecture's creative and performative potential.

PROTOTYPE, the second-year design-build studio at CUHK's School of Architecture, challenges these assumptions by approaching the entire process of designing, building, and performing as a collective and performative practice. Here, students themselves become the performers of the installation, and their actions and movements within and around the built environment become the primary generators of design. Performance, therefore, becomes the engine that drives design decisions from the very beginning, and determines spatial configurations, material choices, structural systems, and technical details. In this inverted model, prototyping becomes a testing ground where the physical actions of performers continuously reshape the installation itself, and each prototype becomes a living experiment in which the studio discovers how performance and form co-create one another.

For their first encounter with real scale design and construction, students designed, built, and performed a public installation in Guangzhou, hundred kilometers from their home institution. Each installation covers approximately 25 square meters, built at full scale using materials including bamboo, steel, fabric, and mirror, selected and tested through iterative prototyping over the course of the semester. Throughout the process, teams engaged with clients, structural engineers, and other stakeholders, navigating fabrication constraints, material delivery, and on-site assembly conditions specific to the Guangzhou Design Capital in Baiyun District. The installations were assembled and activated on site within a week, with the final performance documented on film.

Project: The Dissolving Self

The Dissolving Self is composed of a series of mirror structures that use shifting reflections to create an ever-changing visual experience. Visitors moving through the space become part of the work itself, revealing how human presence and the restless forces of nature intersect, continually reshaping spatial experience and one’s perception of the surrounding environment. It employs curved mirrors that generate complex visual effects as viewers move through the space and the surrounding environment changes.

Project: Shape of Weather

Shape of Weather draws inspiration from the fluid and ever-changing nature of weather. The work moves beyond conventional architectural boundaries defined by walls and enclosed spaces. It creates an open communal plaza where people can experience nature, connect with one another and find moments of rest and ease. Visitors are free to sit, recline, wander through the structure, or play within the space. Shape of Weather invites those within the space to experience the force of weather and dwell in closer harmony with nature.
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Project: The Bamboo Sonata
The Bamboo Sonata integrates musical instruments into the architectural space. Five interconnected sound chambers surround an open-air atrium centred on a tree, each housing bamboo instruments that visitors are free to play. As sounds drift across the spaces, the chambers resonate with one another, creating layered harmonies beneath the courtyard canopy. By night, the atrium of the Bamboo Sonata becomes a music lounge. Beneath the tree, guests sit amid dim light and shifting bamboo shadows, listening as music drifts through the grove and echoes between the five sound chambers.
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Project: Rewilding
Rewilding draws on Lingnan’s summer typhoons, using a spiral path that leads visitors inward. Layers of suspended pale fabric strips overhead evoke dense clouds and violent winds circling the eyes of storms. Visitors gradually enter the central space of Rewilding. Four-metre-high walls of white fabric create the stillness of a storm’s eye, while the open roof frames a patch of sky above. Within this quiet enclosure, visitors are invited to slow down, sense the movement of air and time and enter into conversation with the self.

Course Tutors:

FERRETTO, Peter W.
GHELICHI, Pedram
SHINJI, Wataru
WUETHRICH, Caroline
XU, Liang

The Dissolving Self Project Design Team:

CHAN, Pak Nin; CHU, Mei Ling; HO, Wei Yee Valerie; LE, Quang Tuan; LEE, Yi Ning 李詒嬣; LEUNG, Hiu Yan; LIU, Sai Ho; LUI, Hei Yi; WONG, Cheuk Lam; WONG, Tsz Ching

The Shape of Weather Project Design Team:

CHAN, Man Kay; CHEN, Wing Yin; HO, Kwing Shuen KONG, Wing Yan; LIANG, Pok To Bosco; MAK, Ka Ian; SUTEDJA, Bryan Amaniel; TSE, Yu Sum Maisie; WONG, Kai Hei

The Bamboo Sonata Project Design Team:

AUDREY-NADIA-HADITIO; CHONG, Eugenie; CHOY, Wing Yan; CHUNG, Ka Tung; HUNG, Chun Shing; LAM, Man Wai; LEE, Lok Man Jade; NG, Ching Yan

The Rewilding Project Design Team:
CHAU, Yui Yan; CHU, Hin Hang; KWOK, Hiu Yeung; KWOK, Ting Ching; LAU, Pak Yin; SY, Ka Bui; SZE, Hoi Ching; TAI, Sze Lok; YESTEMESSOV, Zhanibek