rocker-lange blog

We are excited to share that Christian J. Lange will be speaking at a special Book Talk hosted by ORO Editions and Axiomatic Editions during the opening weekend of the Biennale Architettura 2025 in Venice. Set against the beautiful backdrop of Palazzo Bembo, the event will explore the continued relevance of architectural books in our digital era, drawing inspiration from Victor Hugo’s famous line, “Ceci tuera cela”. Christian will be joining an exceptional group of authors to discuss the work on his book “Cities of Repetition”, the role of authorship as activism, and how those ideas intersect with the Biennale’s theme, “Intelligens.”

Location and time:
Palazzo Bembo
Saturday, May 10, 2025, 4:00 PM

Featured Speakers include:
– Adèle Naudé Santos (Santos Prescott and Associates)
– Alan Ricks (MASS.)
– Charles Waldheim (Harvard University)
– Christian J. Lange and Jason Carlow (HKU and American University of Sharjah)
– John Marx (Form4 Architecture)
– John Lin (HKU)
– Jordan Rogove & Wayne Norbeck (DXA Studio)
– Susan Jones (atelierjones)

Moderators: William Richards (Team Three) & Ashley Simone (Axiomatic Editions)
Presented with the support of the European Cultural Centre.

If you’re attending the Biennale, I hope you’ll join us for this afternoon of critical discussion and exchange.

We are pleased to announce that Christian J. Lange will be delivering a lecture, alongside co-author Jason Carlow, as part of the Future Human Habitats Lecture Series 2025 at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School. In this talk, Lange and Carlow will share insights from their recent book, Cities of Repetition: Hong Kong’s Private Housing Estates. The lecture will explore the urban logic, architectural patterns, and socio-spatial dynamics of Hong Kong’s large-scale residential developments, offering a critical lens on the city’s high-density living environments.

The lecture will be held on April 1st 2025 at 5:00pm in the lobby in Building H Future Human Habitats, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School.

I am thrilled to share the upcoming book launch at HKU of “Cities of Repetition,” co-authored by Christian J. Lange. The book launch is part of HKU’s discussion series and will be held on 23 October, 2024.

Abstract:
Housing is one of the most fundamental elements of urban growth, and Hong Kong has for decades hosted some of the most intense built environments on the planet. The city’s urbanization has produced unparalleled living conditions in terms of building scale and density. Due to lack of space, topographical constraints, political conditions, and extremely high population density, Hong Kong became an incubator for the development of housing models and tower typologies for high-density living.

“Cities of Repetition provides a comprehensive graphic documentation and analysis of the largest Hong Kong housing estates built by private developers from the late 1960’s through the early 2000’s. The original drawings and diagrams illustrate and compare the ultra-dense, mass-produced, highly repetitive built environments in which hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents live. Drawings, diagrams and photographs not only display the immense scale of the housing estates within the city, but also present the hundreds of similarly planned housing units and their subtle differences. Detailed diagrams compare statistical information to show how the planning of these massive estates has evolved over the past decades to efficiently conform to building regulations. The publication and larger research project present a comprehensive analysis of the architectural and spatial realities of some of the most densely populated, urban environments ever built. Overall, the project presents an investigation and analysis of how hundreds of residential towers in Hong Kong, built in the final decades of the twentieth century, were shaped by regulatory and economic forces that radically standardized the city and limited architectural specificity in relation to context.

Fall 2024 Discussion Series
Date: 23 October, 2024
Time: 18:30-20:00
Venue: KB419, Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong

Speakers:

Christian J. Lange, Associate Professor (Teaching), Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong

Jason F. Carlow, Associate Professor and Head of Department, Department of Architecture, American University of Sharjah

Discussants:
– Eunice Seng, Head, Department of Architecture, HKU
– Juan Du, Dean, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, University of Toronto
– Gary Chang, Managing Director, EDGE Design Institute Ltd. HKU MArch 1987⁠
– Lam Lai Shun, Associate, Thomas Chow Architects HKU MArch 2013

We are happy to share that Cities of Repetition: Hong Kong’s Private Housing Estates, co-authored by Christian J. Lange and Jason Carlow and designed by Kay Bachmann is printed and up for sale!

Cities of Repetition provides a comprehensive graphic documentation and analysis of the largest Hong Kong housing estates built by private developers from the late 1960’s through the early 2000’s. The original drawings and diagrams illustrate and compare the ultra-dense, mass-produced, highly repetitive built environments in which hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents live. Drawings, diagrams and photographs not only display the immense scale of the housing estates within the city, but also present the hundreds of similarly planned housing units and their subtle differences. Detailed diagrams compare statistical information to show how the planning of these massive estates has evolved over the past decades to efficiently conform to building regulations. The publication and larger research project present a comprehensive analysis of the architectural and spatial realities of some of the most densely populated, urban environments ever built.

While there are many positive aspects of Hong Kong’s housing estates, including remarkable urban density and economic viability, new building codes that allow for and encourage variation and heterogeneity for mass housing developments, must be developed and implemented if cities of the future are to provide humane and diverse modes of housing to sustain socially viable, heterogeneous communities.

For more information on the book, please visit:
https://appliedresearchanddesign.com/product/cities-of-repetition

Rocker-Lange Architects’s Shanghai Lilong Tower Urbanism project is featured in the latest issue of AD. Guest-edited by Tom Verebes, the issue includes work by Buro Happold, David Clovers, Arup, Gramazio Kohler, Rocker-Lange Architects, Michael Bell, Elena Manferdini, Neil Leach and interviews with Mark Burry and Kenneth Frampton & and many more.

Book Launch for: Verebes, T. Masterplanning the Adaptive City: Computational Urbanism in the Twenty-first Century (Routledge:2013)

2 October 2013
19:00-20:30
The University of Hong Kong
Department of Architecture
VENUE:　CYP P4, Chong Yuet Ming Building

Organisers: Thomas Tsang, Tom Verebes
Presenters: David Erdman, Gao Yan, Christian J. Lange, Matthew Pryor, Tom Verebes
Moderator: Juan Du

Schedule:
– Introduction to: Masterplanning the Adaptive City: Computational Urbanism in the Twenty-first Century, Tom Verebes
– Matthew Pryor
– Christian J. Lange
– Gao Yan
– David Erdman
– Panel Discussion with all presenters, Moderated by Juan Du

Rocker-Lange’s project “Density & Openness Revisited”: Recoding Building Bulk in Hong Kong will be published in the forthcoming book “Masterplanning the Adaptive City”. The book which is edited by Tom Verebes is about computational urbanism in the Twenty-First Century and will be published on 12th August 2013 by Routledge.

Abstract of the book:
“Computational design has become widely accepted into mainstream architecture, but this is the first book to advocate applying it to create adaptable masterplans for rapid urban growth, urban heterogeneity, through computational urbanism. Practitioners and researchers here discuss ideas from the fields of architecture, urbanism, the natural sciences, computer science, economics, and mathematics to find solutions for managing urban change in Asia and developing countries throughout the world. Divided into four parts (historical and theoretical background, our current situation, methodologies, and prototypical practices), the book includes a series of essays, interviews, built case studies, and original research to accompany chapters written by editor Tom Verebes to give you the most comprehensive overview of this approach.”

Essays by Marina Lathouri, Jorge Fiori, Jonathan Solomon, Patrik Schumacher, Peter Trummer, and David Jason Gerber.

Interviews with Dana Cuff, Xu Wei Guo, Matthew Prior, Tom Barker, Su Yunsheng, and Brett Steele.

Built case studies by Zaha Hadid Architects, James Corner Field Operations, XWG Studio, MAD, OCEAN Consultancy Network, Plasma Studio, Groundlab, Peter Trummer, Serie Architects, dotA, and Rocker-Lange Architects.

For more information please visit: http://www.routledge.com/

“Architecture in Formation is the first digital architecture manual that bridges the gap between theory and practice, giving you a vital resource for navigating the digital future. Sixteen essays from practitioners, historians, and theorists look at the many ways information technology is being used to conceive and assess architecture to present to you a well-rounded discussion of the field. Twenty-nine projects illustrate real-world examples of the digital made concrete, so that you can see how you might do it too.”

Edited by Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa, Aaron Sprecher

Featuring essays by: Georges Teyssot, Mario Carpo, Martin Bressani, Patrik Schumacher, Bernard Cache, Mark Linder, David Theodore, Evan Douglis, Rocker-Lange Architects, Antoine Picon, Michael Wen-Sen Su, Chris Perry, Alexis Meier, Achim Menges, Martin Bressani

The book will be published on 30th July 2013 by Routledge.

For more information please visit: http://www.routledge.com/

Associate Professor Ingeborg M. Rocker publishes essay entitled “Calculated: formal excesses of digital ornaments,” as a chapter in Ornament Today: Digital, Material, Structural edited by J. H. Gleiter, Professor of architectural theory at the Technical University Berlin.

Rocker’s chapter is part of her ongoing research in the role of computation for the theorization and production of architecture. Rocker’s research of “digital ornament” began in 2009 with her paper “Computation in Command? Fading Flamboyant Architectural Aesthetics,” presented at the Harvard Design School’s Critical Digital Conference.

Her current contribution, “Calculated Excess,” contextualizes the development of ornament within shifts of production logics, from hand-crafted, to industrially produced, to digitally fabricated. Rocker marks the ambiguous terrain between the investigation of production techniques and the ornamental, while drawing parallels between the digital ornament of today and those of the past. Does the computation ability to facilely produce variation through the manipulation of code suggest considering ornament and architecture as a like set of endless differentiations? Or does it rather recommend looking at architecture and ornaments at the level of code itself?

For further details see:
Book:
J. H. Gleiter, editor. Ornament Today: Digital, Material, Structural. Bozen: Free University of Bozen Press, 2012.

Ingeborg M. Rocker of Rocker-Lange Architects announces her book “Computation in Command?” The book that discusses the implication of computation on the theory and praxis of architecture is expected to be published in Fall 2009.