25/03/2026
I feel truly honored to have been invited to join the Fireside Chat at the Hong Kong International Cultural Summit 2026
as part of the welcome dinner where Suraya Al-Hassan, Director of M+,
introduced me and shared the reason why I was invited to speak
She said that in a time when the world is facing uncertainty
what we need
may not simply be architects
but humanitarians
those who think deeply about
the relationship between humans and nature and our responsibility within that relationship
While I was in conversation on stage
with Shirley Surya, Curator of Design and Architecture at M+,
the dialogue brought me back
to the beginning of my work
Elephant World
did not begin with an idea of material
but from a simple necessity
that “the elephant is hungry”
Architecture, therefore,
was not planned in advance
but slowly emerged
through learning
and living together
The three buildings
were not created as objects but to fill a gap of understanding
and to make visible the relationship between humans and elephants
that has existed for more than 400 years-a way of living where humans and elephants grow, work, and depend on each other as one
This is not something new but something that has always been there
only that we have not seen it.
And later, elephant dung bricks
were introduced to extend the architecture
not as a new material
but as a result of coexistence
In this process, many things I thought I already knew
had to be “unlearned”
so that I could “ relearn”
how to live together again
This conversation,
therefore,is not about giving answers
but about asking in a world like this
“ how can we remain human
and live together”