Florence Chan and the other speakers in front of the seminar audience at the American Club in Hong Kong, China.
The KPF Director joined design and development academics and professionals in China’s Greater Bay Area to discuss Rem Koolhaas’ influential findings in the book Great Leap Forward.
Revisiting the research after 28 years, the event marked the departure of Koolhaas and his 6 former students, including former KPF Principal Bernard Chang, on a week-long tour of cities in the Pearl River Delta, one generation after the publication of their research on the same area. The audience, primarily made up of Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) alumni, was heavily engaged in an active conversation covering cultural, political, and professional outlooks on the subject, prefaced with an introduction by Rem Koolhaas and Stephen Petermann. Florence contributed to the discussion with a presentation on the future of urban development in view of recent economic change, drawing on her experience working on KPF’s large-scale contributions to the urban fabric of the Greater Bay Area.
The event took place on Sunday September 15 at the American Club in Hong Kong and was titled “Seminar on the Pearl River Delta and Greater Bay Area.” The event served as an “occasion to reflect on and reframe the impact of the PRD a generation later as it merges into the larger urban and cultural development of the Greater Bay Area (GBA).” The ensuing intellectual tour will be recorded and on display at an exhibition in Beijing at the end of the year.