Join us for a lecture by Prof. Hendrik Tieben and Liqin Ju from The Chinese University of Hong Kong on Shekou Industrial Zone – An experimental community and ‘Test-Tube’ for China’s Urban Reform. The lecture will take place on 10 December at 11h30 in room M11.11, K1 building.
The Lecture
Shenzhen is famous as China’s urban laboratory and birthplace of world-leading digital technologies and electric vehicle companies. However, in 1979, a year before Shenzhen was launched, the nearby Shekou Industrial Zone was founded as the first ‘test-tube’ for reform. Yuan Geng of the China Merchants Group used Shekou for socio-economic and spatial experiments after visits to Hong Kong. Whereas the latter’s influence on Shenzhen and Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Open Door’ policy is widely acknowledged, Shekou in fact went further because the Hong Kong that Yuan studied in the late-1970s was undergoing significant transformation under Governor Murray MacLehose. The essay focuses on Crystal Garden Community, Shekou’s first major development, which Yuan presented personally to Xiaoping in 1984. Hong Kong not only offered new spatial typologies to China but also new lifestyles. MacLehose and Yuan operated in opposing political systems yet today their experiments have resulted in common benefits which are worth remembering.
The Lecturer
Hendrik Tieben is an architect and Professor at the School of Architecture of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). His teaching and research focus on urban design, history, and theory, with a commitment to creating sustainable and inclusive cities. At CUHK, he founded the MSc in Urban Design, and from 2021–2024, directed the School of Architecture. Over the past two decades, he has developed community-driven design and placemaking projects. In 2023, he co-curated Transformative Hong Kong for the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. He currently collaborates with UN-Habitat’s Global Public Space Programme on the relationship between housing, public space, and public facilities. Tieben also serves as chairman of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) and has been visiting scholar at various universities in Europe, Asia, and Oceania.
