This lecture will present Chan’s research on '"A colony of shopkeepers": space of consumption in Hong Kong's New Towns public housing estates, 1954-1989'. It will focus on two of the four spaces explored in the work: the hawker pitch, and modular and multi- storey markets. Taking a non-linear design historical approach, it articulates the development of Hong Kong through the city’s relationship to consumption practices and processes in the housing estate. In the case of the hawker pitch and the modular market, the links between the constant suppression of hawkers in the post-war period with the design aesthetics and approaches to the market offers an insight into the colonial vision of the urban landscape and the ways that people in Hong Kong resisted and appropriated these ideas.

Vivien Chan is a design historian and educator based in Nottingham, UK. She recently completed her PhD in History, as part of the Cultures of Occupation in Twentieth Century Asia project directed by Dr Jeremy Taylor, at the University of Nottingham. She is also a lecturer in design studies and illustration at Nottingham Trent University.

For more information, please refer to the attached PDF

DATE: Thursday, April 25, 2024
TIME: 17:00 – 18:30
LOCATION: SIN 1, at the Department for East Asian Studies/Chinese Studies, Altes AKH, Campus, Spitalgasse 2, Yard 2, Entrance 2.3