John Lin is an architect based in Hong Kong and currently an Associate Professor at The University of Hong Kong. He was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the US in 1983. After studying in both the Art and Engineering programs at The Cooper Union in New York City, he received a professional degree in Architecture from The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union in 2002.

 

John is the director of Rural Urban Framework (RUF), a research and design platform, with co-director Joshua Bolchover. RUF is dedicated to developing sustainable prototypes for rapidly urbanizing areas. Their approach combines research into large scale processes of urbanization and integration of local construction practices with contemporary technology in built projects.

 

RUF is the recipient of numerous international awards, including The Curry Stone Design Prize in 2015 and the Ralph Erskine 100 Years Anniversary Award 2014, given for innovation in architecture that “primarily benefits the less privileged in society”. RUF is also the winner of Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard and the ICON Award Emerging Architectural Practice of the Year in 2013. The “House For All Seasons”, a rural house prototype built in Shaanxi Province, China, is the overall winner of The Architectural Review’s House Award in 2012, the WA Chinese Architecture Award 2012 and the Wienerberger Brick Award 2014. 

 

Bolchover’s and Lin’s recently published book, Rural Urban Framework: Transforming the Chinese Countryside (Birkhauser, 2013), presents the research and projects of RUF in over 18 villages in China, discussing successful projects, failures, and speculations on the recent and coming changes in rural China.

 

www.rufwork.org

 

 

Olivier Ottevaere is an architect and educator, based in Hong Kong. He founded Double(o) Studio with Elsa Caetano and their joint practice fuses architectural design with a focus on structural logics, construction procedures, geometrical organizations, and materiality.

 

Olivier is a full-time assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong. Previously, he has taught at the Architectural Association in London, the Singapore University of Design and Technology, the Royal Academy in Copenhagen, and the EPFL in Switzerland. His work with Atelier de la Conception de L’Espace (ALICE)/EPFL received the Biennial Pries Schweiz (Design Swiss Prize) in 2014 and Best Overall Project from the London Festival of Architecture Biennale in 2008. Double(o)’s precast cell-system for urban housing, ‘House Me Tender’, received The Architectural Review/MIPIM Future Award for Best Residential Project in 2015. Also in 2015, Perspective magazine named Mr. Ottevaere one of Asia-Pacific’s 40 Under 40. 

 

He is a graduate of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of The Cooper Union, in New York, and of The Bartlett School of Architecture, in London.