○ Doreen Heng LIU, Distinguished Professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at Shenzhen University, Director of the Greater Bay Area Innovation Design Laboratory, and Founding Partner and Principal Architect of NODE Architecture & Urbanism, has been invited to serve as Visiting Professor of Practice at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) for the Fall 2026 semester, where he will lead an Option Studio exploring contemporary architectural and urban design issues.
○ The design studio led by Professor Doreen Heng LIU, titled Infrastructure Urbanism: Building Common Grounds across the Border—Between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, will examine how infrastructure can drive urban regeneration and shape new models of spatial development. The studio will address a range of increasingly complex urban challenges shared by the two cities, including acute land scarcity, mono-functional land use, fragmented spatial development, divergent development priorities across the Hong Kong–Shenzhen boundary, environmental degradation, and the growing frequency of extreme weather events. Particular attention will be given to areas severely underserved by public facilities, where rethinking the role of infrastructure and its long-term sustainability becomes a central concern. Through this lens, the studio seeks to explore how infrastructure can move beyond its conventional functional role to become a catalyst for more integrated, resilient, and equitable forms of urban development.
○ The studio builds on Professor Doreen Heng LIU’s longstanding body of urban research and architectural practice across the Pearl River Delta and its surrounding regions, with a sustained focus on the public dimension of infrastructure. Through an integrated approach that combines research and practice, she has developed a series of critical, research-driven design projects guided by the principles of responding to local conditions and working with existing urban dynamics. Engaging with fundamental questions in urbanism and architecture, her work seeks to redefine the boundaries of infrastructural practice and explore new spatial possibilities for a symbiotic society in the post-urban era.
