Duckling Hill - Teaching

Duckling Hill was a teaching and research seminar that investigated the informal appropriation of an urban hillside embedded within the high-density new town of Tseung Kwan O, Hong Kong. Emerging as a vital buffer zone between public housing estates and nature, the hill had been gradually transformed by local residents through self-built paths, shelters, gardens, and ritual spaces. The students examined these soft, user-driven infrastructures as expressions of collective care, ecological knowledge, and everyday inhabitation. Through fieldwork, documentation, and design research, students explored how people-centered, non-professional interventions challenge conventional planning approaches and reveal alternative models for understanding, representing, and designing urban landscapes.