Kurt CHAN

28/01

First meeting with group RED, we discussed the topic "WINNING A PROJECT" and tried to have a basic understanding about how much information and the range of knowledge we need to feed our classmates, meanwhile I find out the necessity of this topic in our future career in how learning more of this help the office or design standing out in a legal and standard way.

Plus we had a self-introduction section among the teammates, since the pandemic made us little chance to get along in person in the last semesters, it was quite a precious and helpful chance to know each as we are going to cooperate as a team.

25/02

First quiz covering the knowledge from the first three topics:

• You are a Landscape Architect!

• Where do you Work?

• You are the Boss!

I thought I understood these topics enough but truth was I still miss several aspects particularly the job possibilities that HK government offers for registered landscape architect since the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department / Environmental Protection Department / Leisure and Cultural Services Department do not offer positions; also, insurance is extremely crucial in running a landscape office, or any other kind of business, with the multiple types of cover provided, need / period / excess /limitations / amount of cover are criteria that need to be taken into consideration when it comes to sort out the priority and distribution along with budget and quotes.

04/03

Second quiz covering the knowledge from the same three topics as the first time, which I thought it would be easier than the previous time, but turned out it was a tough quiz for me especially when it came to the related knowledge about Landscape Visual Impact Assessment (LVIA).

LVIA is a part of EIA Study Brief issued by Environmental Protection Department (EPD) and the Technical Memorandum on the Environmental Impact Assessment Process (EIAO-TM), as it aims to consider any potential conflicts with landscape planning policy, any likely impacts to landscape resources and character whilst identifying visual impacts in the areas surrounding the project during both the construction and operation stages, the scope of the assessment shouldn't include Ecological impacts, which will be assessed under the Ecological Impact Assessment section, and the Drainage impacts, which will be assessed under the Drainage Impact Assessment section.

09/03

Second meeting with RED team, we figured the work distribution and presentation from, also the potential interview direction and questions for the interviews with Ivan Valine, founding partner of VALECHE Studio also out teacher at HKU, and Jason Hilgefort, founding parter of Land+Civilization Compositions, both two are Hong Kong-based landscape architect with global working experience, we believed they would inspired and help us a lot in this project.

11/03

Interviews with Ivan and Jason, we talked about the biding experience from their studios also the ways they took in working with clients and cooperate companies, both harmonious and discordant cases along with the lesson and experience they build up in the whole process of they running business, as well as the different work and cooperation modes between China, Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian regions.

25/03

Third mini quiz covering the knowledge from the following two topics:

• Winning a Project

• Organising a project?

I found myself particularly unclear when sorting out the obligations taken by different parties in the process of tender.

08/04

Site visit carried out by the Urbis team show us the site of their ongoing landscape restoration project-South East New Territories (SENT) Landfill and Extension, which help me understand better about the presentation last week by Urbis about the project, also have a more clear understand about the routine and cooperation mood between client, design company and supplier.

29/04

Reflection on Peer Assessment and Interview

More than just mock assessment and interview, both assignments focus more on the introspection and self-evaluation for me, and please don't regard me as being self-centered ;). Nicholas A. Christakis, the writer of Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, indicates that there are eight elements being built into every functioning human genetically to form the society, among them, The capacity to have and recognise individual identity, Cooperation, Social learning and teaching are three elements tightly related to teamwork, as they are abilities born and keep on strengthening with us. The ideas about learning from strengths and weaknesses and thinking from others' perspectives, which I shared on both assignments accurately fulfill the elements of Cooperation and Social learning and teaching, which leads me to a further reflection about the last component, The capacity to have and recognise individual identity.

Different from the overall categories of identities including cultural , ethnic, gender and so on, I would consider the role each individual play as the individual identity in teamwork. An interesting point occurs to me is that this could change a lot when working in different teams as the team members and work content differs. But identically, I would consider a learner as my most basic role, then as a participants, performers, practitioners or any other possibilities. The most crucial part is that, just like the slogan been put under the interview assignment, don't be shy but do shine, a clear understanding about individual identity is about be aware of what I'm currently capable of and how can I managed to work the best inside the team as putting myself in the right place, as to shine in a humble way.

Reference:

Md, N. C. A. (2019). Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society (First Edition). Little, Brown Spark.

02/05

Covid-19 Impacts on Landscape Industry

In the past year and a half of the covid-19 pandemic, the impact of the global economy has not subsided and landscape industry is no exception. Multiple surveys were taken to have a better understand about the detail and the scope of the impacts. One of them was conducted by The Green Industry Pros involving 249 landscaping companies in the U.S.

From the response, it appears COVID-19 has touched companies of all sizes, ranging from 1-4 employees and less than $50,000 revenue up to the larger entities with 20+ employees and a sales volume of more than $5 million.

It's very obvious that no matter companies in big or small scale, landscapers have endured recessions and economic downturns in the relatively recent past, but nevertheless, is the impacts all negative, or in other word, is there any rising possibilities in this challenges?

To better understand the potential behind this, I found a talk between three senior landscape practitioners, Richard Restuccia, Brian Horn and Chris Sabbarese, in which they shares very inspiring ideas.

In terms of recommendations in practice, despite the very basic suggestion in sanitization and health care guidelines, an imperative part is managing the image of the office, which could be concluded in these three parts:

·Try to be essential, in this means broadcasting your office in front of people or authorities can make your office essential in the industry, including the local association or any relative cooperators.

·Keep contact with clients, it's commonly-known that basically all the office are facing a decline of postpone in works, but no matter in commercial or residential, landscape work would never be terminated and eventually, landscapers would still be needed.

·Stay positive, by treating this pandemic as any other crisis that have the possibilities to face in this industry, keeping a positive attitude and vide matters for the morale, which counts if the the office wanna stay in a professional image.

Apart from this, new opportunities were identified, which includes these following parts:

·Innovation in technology, in this doesn't only referring to remote working, but also possibilities in implementation of landscape project, for example, GPS technology co-working with maintenance and construction lowering the labour which require in person contract between landscape consultant with client, or, alternative garden design with water saving strategy as a why in saving cost long-termly. Even currently it is not a seamless transition towards fully tech-based landscape, but no doubt this could be a chance to accelerate the development.

·Garden-farming, as we all faced the food shortage and break in grocery supply chain when the pandemic just happened, residential clients tend to pay more attention on the source and security of food, as we all spending more time at home, garden farming start to be alternative project that landscape consultant could work with clients. I've looked in to some cases or ongoing business about home farming, hydroponic vertical farming, seems to be a feasible method for Hong Kong since the stressed land shortage for a home-based farming.

This also relate me to "revitalization" projects that Hong Kong are currently working on at rural communities like Lai Chi Wo, despite the criticise against the word "revitalization" used by government, the fact that traditional agriculture and food production become a new choice for urban residents' leisure activities is inspiring in terms of a reflection on food security, life style, urbanism as well as the consumption and production pattern in Hong Kong and so as any other related topics.

Besides these, they also shared lovely moments that they consider landscape industry the most mutually supportive industry, as they see landscape consultants willing to maintain or practice landscape in gardens of staffs from health care industry or public spaces belong to or service health care institution as the pandemic occupying times and energy from them.

Overall, all the possibilities follow a base priority of improving the life in a landscape way, and not just limit in creating a aesthetically satisfied garden, but a fifth room that ensure the health and pleasure of users physically and mentally, and undoubtedly, this advantage that landscape intervention could bring should shine brighter under the circumstance of this ongoing pandemic.

Reference:

StackPath. (2020). Greenindustrypros. https://www.greenindustrypros.com/mowing-maintenance/business/article/21129115/landscaping-companies-are-seeing-impact-from-covid19-pandemic

Restuccia, R. (2020, April 9). How COVID-19 Impacts The Landscape Industry. Jain Irrigation USA. https://jainsusa.com/blog/how-covid-19-impacts-the-landscape-industry/

Segran, E. (2021, April 30). How COVID-19 fed the dream of growing food at home. Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90618588/how-covid-19-fed-the-dream-of-growing-food-at-home

Girling, R. (2020, July 10). Home Hydroponics: Tech Trend Or The New Victory Garden? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robgirling/2020/06/30/home-hydroponics-tech-trend-or-the-new-victory-garden/?sh=4ff4e024545f

R. (2021, April 12). Food grown close to home: Urban Farming flourishing during pandemic. BusinessWorld. https://www.bworldonline.com/food-grown-close-to-home-urban-farming-flourishing-during-pandemic/

22/05

Thesis Review

Early this week I finally had my thesis reviewed, the response was quite good and I also received several interesting opinions in possible continuation or deeper study in thesis. As my thesis criticized the existing centralized water supply system in hong kong and I proposed a decentralized new strategy, but one part I didn't think about, is this also could work as a criticise against the massive infrastructure we been put into the long process of urbanism. Even though my proposal managed in transforming the centralized engineering-efficient solution to a landscape-friendly strategy, for now it can only focus on a very small part of water supply, not to mention water utilities was just a part of the whole construction, what happened after should be a re-thinking of traditional pattern in urbanism.

This also remind me to the project of revised masterplan for Cantho, Vietnam from Kelly Shannon, instead of keeping the water out of the city for the next few hundreds years, the project proposed a "water-welcomed" way by involving the water into the city, and taking the advantage of seasonal flooding by cooperating with local traditional agriculture and aquaculture practice. In this case, it was not just the masterplan being revised, but also the idea of urbanism being revised. Rather than simply critisizing and denying the engineering solution, or, simply arguing the importance of keeping the city in a natural form, it managed to taking the advantages from both side, provided a new combine, in which the development of urbanism and conservation of natural could be closely boned in harmony.