Professor Seng, Mei Feng Eunice 成美芬
EUNICE M.F. SENG is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Architecture and founding principal of SKEW Collaborative, Shanghai-Hong Kong. Her research interests include the histories and theories of modernity, housing and the metropolis, politics of power and post-colonialism, inter-disciplinary and comparative approaches to architecture, as well as utopias, artifacts and their cultural representations. Current and past research projects include “Inventing the Public: The Colonial Complex and Modern Collective Housing in Singapore, 1936-1976” (2008-), “Building Housing Experiments, c.1950s: A Comparative Analysis of Modern Housing in Hong Kong, Singapore and London” (2009-2011), “Documenting Man Wah Sun Chuen: A Critical History of Collective Dwelling in Hong Kong, c.1950s-70s” (2012-) and “Artifacts: Partitions” (2012-).
Ongoing efforts to situate history and theory within architectural design and practice extend to invited lectures and published writings such as “6 Moments of Utopia: Architecture & Housing from Modernist Theory to Contemporary Practice,” “Mapping Modern Housing, c.1950s,” and “Reading Simmel, Thinking Shanghai” in 2008; “Shanghai-Artifacts: The Reproduction of Nostalgia, or the Possibilities for a Design Culture” and “Housing Stories: The Politics and Aesthetics of green & other possibilities” in 2009; “Garden City Inc.: Utopia as private enterprise” and “Architecture or Utopia (and 6 other architectures)” in 2010; “Politics of Greening: Spatial Constructions of the Public in Singapore” in 2011, and “She’ll kill for a View: Housing, Film & the Asian City” in summer 2012.
At HKU, SENG teaches core undergraduate courses on the history and theory of Modern Architecture and a Common Core course on the theories and representations of the city titled “Metropolitan Visions.” SENG teaches MArch I design studio and graduate level electives including a seminar course titled “ReBuilding Utopia: Visions of architecture in the post-war world” and a MArch Thesis Research Seminar core course on critical architecture. She also advises graduate student thesis and is a guest lecturer for an intra-faculty course on Housing & Cities. SENG is also a guest lecturer for the Faculty’s Architectural Conservation Program, the Career Discovery Summer Program and the Cities in Asia: Studio SHA-HKG-International Summer Program in Architecture. She currently sits on the History and Theory Committee and the Publications Committee, and is a member of the Affordable Housing Research Network (AHRN).
At SKEW Collaborative, SENG directs design research and has exhibited their work at a number of international platforms, including the Venice Biennale 2004, the Singapore Art Festival 2004, SENI Art Festival 2004 at the Singapore Art Museum, Organized Spaces Exhibition at the New York Asian American Art Center in 2005, Shanghai Contemporary Art Exhibition 2005, Get-It-Louder Exhibition 2005 in Shanghai & Beijing, Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale 2007 & 2009, You-Prison Exhibition at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo 2008 in Turin, 100% Design Exhibition 2009 in Shanghai, Chengdu Biennale 2011 and Singapore Hub-to-Hub Public Art Program 2011. SENG also frequently presents SKEW’s work to a wide range of audiences such as at the ERA World Design Congress 2005 in Copenhagen, the Asia-GSD Lecture Series at Harvard University and the Student Lecture Series at Princeton University in 2006, the Guest Lecture Series at the National University of Singapore, the Singapore Institute of Architects, Asian Urban Lab Singapore and Tongji University in 2007, the Anyang Public Art Project 2009 in Korea, and the Modern Asian Architects Network (MAAN) Conference 2010 in Singapore.
SENG obtained her degrees from Columbia University, Princeton University and the National University of Singapore. Prior to the founding of SKEW, she was project architect at Architectural Research Office in New York City and was assistant editor for the bilingual journal 32 Beijing/New York. During this period, she began to write and published critical essays on domesticity, housing and the Asian city (e.g. “Hom-e-scape(s): tabula rasa, or a denial of a Singaporean contemporaneity,” Singapore Architect Journal, 1999). In 2000, she held an exhibition “Speculative Projects in Five Cities” at the Substation Gallery in Singapore, co-designed an installation “Inhabitations: NYC-SIN” for the “Reconstruction of a City” Exhibition at the inaugural Singapore Biennale, and participated in a group exhibition “Researching Cities” at the Storefront for Art and Architecture New York City. SENG is also the recipient of numerous awards and grants from Princeton University, Design Singapore Council, the Lee Foundation, the Singapore National Arts Council and the University of Hong Kong.
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