Co-Director of CiRe. Professor, Provost’s Chair, and Head of Department at NUS Department of Architecture. Founder of the Urban Commons Laboratory, University of Washington.
CONTACT INFORMATION
Department of Architecture, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore, 4 Architecture Drive, Singapore 117566
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Bottom-up placemaking, civic engagement, urban commons, insurgent and informal urbanism, transcultural and civic urbanisms in Asia, and community-based design
In a career that spans the Pacific, Professor Jeff Hou has worked with indigenous tribes, farmers, fishers, and villagers in Asia and inner-city immigrant youths and elders in North American cities, on projects ranging from the conservation of wildlife habitats to bottom-up urban placemaking. Before his appointment as the Head of the Department at DOA in 2024, Hou was Professor of Landscape Architecture and led the Urban Commons Lab at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He served as Chair of Landscape Architecture at UW from 2009 to 2017.
A pioneer in bottom-up placemaking and civic engagement, Hou’s published work includes Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities (2010), Transcultural Cities: Border-Crossing and Placemaking (2013), Messy Urbanism: Learning from the “Other” Asian Cites (2016), Design as Democracy: Techniques for Collective Creativity (2017), and Emerging Civic Urbanisms in Asia: Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, and Taipei beyond Developmental Urbanization (2022). His collaborative publications received the EDRA Places Book Award in 2010, 2012, and 2018.
LATEST
- Hou, J. (2023). Seattle’s CHOP guerrilla garden as a “thick” space of civil resistance. Local Environment, 28(2): 189-202.
- Chu, A-Y., and Hou, J. (2023). Voices of Precarity in Taipei. Topos, 125: 78-84.
- Summers, B.T., Till, J., Deamer, P., Hou, J., Barber, D.A., Nduom, D., Graham, J., Wendl, N., Shepard, C., Roberts, A., Jensen Carr, S., Theodore, D., “Field Notes on Design Activism: 2,” Places Journal, November 2022. Accessed 03 Nov 2022.
- Hou, J. (2021). Civic Resilience and the COVID-19 Crisis in Urban Asia. Journal of Geographical Science, 100: 121-136.
- Hou, J. (2021). Be Water: Protests in Liquid Public Space. Protest Urbanism. MONU, 34 (October): 12-17.
Hou’s career recognitions include his elevation to the Council of Fellows of the American Society of Landscape Architects (2023), CELA Outstanding Educator Award (2023), CELA Award of Excellence in Research and/or Creative Work (2019), Community Builder Award (2012) from Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority, and Gold Circle Award (2011) from the Organization of Chinese Americans Greater Seattle Chapter in appreciation for a lifelong contribution to the Chinese American and Asian American community and its heritage.
Hou received his Ph.D. in Environmental Planning and M Arch from the University of California, Berkeley, MLA from the University of Pennsylvania, and B Arch from the Cooper Union. He was the City of Vienna Visiting Professor at TU Wien (2013), a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan (2015), a Landscape Architecture Foundation Fellow for Innovation and Leadership (2020), and a Visiting Professor at Awaji Landscape Planning and Horticulture Academy, Chiba University, National Taiwan University, Portland State University, and University of Southern Florida.
- Lozanovska, M., Pieris, A., Haghighi, F., Taylor, W.M., Hou, J., Smitheram, J., & Chee, L. (2021). Other Spaces of Quarantine, Fabrications, 30(3): 416-429.
- Hou, J. (2020). Guerrilla Urbanism: Urban Design and the Practices of Resistance. Urban Design International, 25(2): 117-125.
- Knierbein, S., Hou, J., Gabauer, A. (2020). Public Space, Civic Dignity and Urban Resistance in the Age of Shrinking Democracy. Transactions of the Association of European Schools of Planning, 4(2020): 46-58.
- Hou, J. (2020). Governing Urban Gardens for Resilient Cities: Examining the “Garden City Initiative” in Taipei. Urban Studies 57(7): 1398-1416.