In a field as inured to change and flux as architecture, we need a ‘black box’. This device can record and monitor the ups-and-downs caused by constant debates. It can assist in the investigation and evaluation of our recent architectural crisis, not merely in terms of the economic crisis that resulted in a huge drop in the pace of building construction as well as in an architect’s income, but more acutely the struggle in defining what architecture really means in this technologically driven information age.

The Dialogue Recorder is this ‘black box’ for architecture. The editors of this volume of the HKU Architecture Papers Series have framed their innovative design research and diverse student work through a series of provocative questions and answers. Through this process, a student-led conversation reveals the depth and richness of debate conducted within the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong.

The HKU Architecture Papers (AP) Project is an annual collaborative exercise of documentation, reflection, and continuation of student works produced in the Department of Architecture of the University of Hong Kong, by the fresh graduate class. Dialogue Recorder is the second volume of AP. Its third volume, Make Room, is also now available.