Enhancing people’s lives through architecture

Architecture stands at the core of our lives. Every day we live and work in buildings of different types, but we seldom look at our relationship with architecture. Architect Rain Chan believes “Architecture is a set of thinking methods. It helps us think how to create the cityscape and transform our ideas of urban life into reality. We should care for architecture, just like we care for our lives.”

Rain went to study architecture at Harvard University in the US after he received the Scholarship. Bit by bit, he found he was more interested in academic research and teaching. He also preferred working on smaller projects which gave him more room for imagination and innovation than the large-scale projects handled by architectural firms. Finding inter-disciplinary cooperation projects especially intriguing, Rain worked with environmental biologists to develop a coral ecosystem model for Hong Kong waters, and collaborated with an artist on an augmented reality project. Being a fan of natural materials, he also tried testing whether bamboo scaffolding could replace welding and cement to build a children’s theatre stage.