This year’s theme — TECHFORMANCE: Technology, Platform and Performance — responds to global concerns about the impact of AI on authorship, ethics, and creativity in built environment practices through 25 exhibits from Hong Kong and overseas exhibitors. Rather than presenting AI as a threat, the Biennale reframes it as a platform for civic imagination, public experimentation, and participatory design.
“Through UABBHK 2025, we aim to reclaim architecture as a human-centred discipline — one that celebrates creativity, ethics, and civic responsibility in the age of AI,” said Ar. Allen POON, Chairman of The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Biennale Foundation.
Two Venues, Two Curatorial Focuses
At Oi!, the exhibition explores Co-Creation and Urban Narratives with the Community. Visitors are invited to engage directly with interactive installations that respond to sound, movement, memory, and language. The design of the exhibition reflects the venue’s warehouse heritage, featuring arched aluminium structures that create vaulted spaces for community interaction and storytelling.
At EKCC, the exhibition shifts the focus to Experimental AI-driven Urban Futures. A series of modular lab tables serve as platforms for collaborative experimentation, integrating technology and design in a hands-on setting. Both venues at Oi! and EKCC are further unified by a coherent spatial language using aluminium extrusion bent into arcs — a material choice that balances cost-efficiency, elegance, and reusability.
“We see each venue not just as a display, but as a stage for civic performance,” said Dr. Jimmy HO and Ar. Aron TSANG, Lead Curators of UABBHK 2025. “By tailoring the design of each site to its specific context, we invite the public to co-create the urban futures they want to see.”
Exhibits from UABBHK 2025 will also be showcased at the coming Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (Shenzhen) (UABBSZ), which will open by late December 2025 at the Hetao Science and Technology Innovation Centre in Shenzhen. The exhibition will feature a portal-inspired installation symbolising the collaboration between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, further reinforcing the Biennale’s cross-border dialogue and spatial continuity.
For more information, please visit UABBHK 2025’s website: https://uabb2025.hkia.org.hk/en. For detailed exhibitor list and installation descriptions, please refer to the appendix.
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About The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Biennale Foundation
The Hong Kong Institute of Architects Biennale Foundation is a non-profit making organisation established and incorporated in 2014 for charitable purposes. The objects for which the Biennale Foundation is established are:
- To promote creativity and advance the understanding, appreciation and interest of architectural and design excellence
- To encourage cross-border and cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration among creative professionals from Hong Kong, other parts of the Greater China region and overseas
- To support art, design, architectural and cultural education for students and youth, the community, and policy makers
- To create a favourable environment for study, research and experimentation of design, art and architectural works in an exhibition scale
- To energise and revitalise specific sites of interests by introduction of cultural and creative events
About the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency
The Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA) established in June 2024, formerly known as Create Hong Kong (CreateHK), is a dedicated office set up by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau to provide one-stop services and support to the cultural and creative industries with a mission to foster a conducive environment in Hong Kong to facilitate the development of arts, culture and creative sectors as industries. Its strategic foci are nurturing talent and facilitating start-ups, exploring markets, promoting cross-sectoral and cross-genre collaboration, promoting the development of arts, culture and creative sectors as industries under the industry-oriented principle, and promoting Hong Kong as Asia’s creative capital and fostering a creative atmosphere in the community to implement Hong Kong’s positioning as the East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange under the National 14th Five-Year Plan.
2025 Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (Hong Kong)’s Disclaimer:
The Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region provides funding support to the project only, and does not otherwise take part in the project. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials/events (or by members of the project team) are those of the project organisers only and do not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau, the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency, the CreateSmart Initiative Secretariat or the CreateSmart Initiative Vetting Committee.
