[Vlog] Visit to Southeast University 东南大学 in Nanjing 南京

I had the privilege of visiting Southeast University 东南大学 in Nanjing 南京, one of China's oldest and most influential universities in architecture, planning, and engineering. Founded in 1902, Southeast University has played a central role in shaping modern architectural education in China, combining international architectural foundations with a profound engagement with Chinese architectural heritage.

My visit, together with my PhD student Amr Farouk, was organized through the generous invitation of Professor Wang, who welcomed us to the historic Sipailou Campus.

What stayed with me most was the extraordinary continuity between architectural history and contemporary innovation. At Southeast University, the past is not treated as something frozen in archives. It remains present in the studios, teaching culture, research questions, and the way new generations of architects are trained to think about cities, climate, materials, and society.

🏛️ A Journey Through More Than a Century of Architectural Education

The visit began with a guided architectural tour across the historic studios of the School of Architecture, the Asian Architecture Archives Center, and the International Built Environment Innovation Center.

Walking through these spaces revealed something distinctive about Southeast University: a century of architectural knowledge is continuously connected to emerging questions of sustainability, climate resilience, urban transformation, and design innovation.

The School of Architecture has played a foundational role in the development of modern architectural education in China. Its intellectual tradition brings together rigorous design training, technological knowledge, urban thinking, and a deep understanding of Chinese architectural heritage.

For anyone interested in how architecture evolves across cultures and generations, this is an exceptional place to observe how history can remain alive while supporting innovation.

🎓 From Low-Carbon Design to Building Circularity

I delivered a guest lecture to faculty members, researchers, and students, focusing on low-carbon design, building circularity, and methodological advances in sustainable construction.

The discussions went beyond individual technologies or isolated building solutions. We explored more fundamental questions:

• How can buildings become genuine material banks rather than future demolition waste?

• How can circularity be measured rigorously rather than used as a general sustainability claim?

• How should architectural design respond simultaneously to embodied carbon, operational energy, climate resilience, and long-term adaptability?

• How can we connect architectural quality with quantitative environmental performance without reducing design to a checklist?

These questions are increasingly central to the future of architecture. Southeast University provides a particularly important environment for this conversation because of its ability to connect architectural design, engineering, heritage, and urban research within one academic culture.

🤝 Conversations on Architectural Education and Future Collaboration

The day continued with discussions involving senior professors, including Qi Kang and Cao Shi-Jie, where we exchanged perspectives on architectural education, urban transitions, interdisciplinary research, and the changing responsibilities of architects in an era of climate and resource constraints.

These exchanges were particularly valuable because China is confronting sustainability challenges at a scale rarely encountered elsewhere. The speed of urbanization, the enormous existing building stock, the demand for renovation, and the need to reduce both operational and embodied carbon make Chinese cities critical laboratories for the future of sustainable architecture.

Our discussions also opened perspectives for future collaboration in low-carbon buildings, circular construction, climate-responsive design, and new methods for connecting architectural research with measurable environmental performance.

The visit concluded with a dinner with colleagues from the Architecture Research Institute and the school leadership. These informal moments are often where academic collaboration begins to take a more concrete shape, through open conversations about shared research interests, student exchanges, joint publications, and future projects.

🎓 A note for future Master's and PhD students

If you are considering studying architecture, urban planning, building technology, or sustainable design in China, Southeast University deserves serious consideration. It offers something increasingly rare: a world-class architectural tradition, direct engagement with China's extraordinary urban transformation, strong connections between architecture and engineering, and an academic environment where heritage and innovation are not treated as opposites.

For international students and researchers, the opportunity to study architecture in China is also an opportunity to question assumptions shaped by European or Western architectural education and to understand buildings and cities through a fundamentally different historical, cultural, and spatial perspective.

The learning curve can be demanding. The intellectual return can be substantial.

🙏 My sincere appreciation to Professor Wang for the generous invitation and warm welcome, and to Professors Qi Kang and Cao Shi-Jie, the school leadership, colleagues from the Architecture Research Institute, and all the faculty members, researchers, and students who contributed to the discussions and made this visit memorable.

I also appreciated sharing this experience with my PhD student Amr Farouk. Academic visits become particularly meaningful when they create opportunities not only for senior researchers, but also for the next generation to build their own international networks and intellectual perspectives.

The future of sustainable architecture will depend on exactly these kinds of international bridges, connecting architectural heritage with climate action, design creativity with measurable performance, and local knowledge with global research collaboration.

I look forward to what we may build together.

📽️ Watch the academic vlog about the visit 👉 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8r4OCjCMwE

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