Wong Yunn Chii and Cheah Kok Ming: ADERA Symposium 2020

ADERA stands for Architecture Design Education and Research in ASEAN. It is a thematic network of the ASEAN Universities Network (AUN). Sanctioned as a group in 2018, the forming of ADERA within the family of AUN is an on-going effort to forge common grounds in our educational endeavours and to advance excellence in those areas. ADERA overall thrust is to create a platform of intellectual exchange on the futures of architecture design education and research in Southeast Asia. ADERA hosted its first inaugural virtual meeting and symposium on 27-28 July 2020.

Lead by two Convenors – Associate Prof Wong Yunn Chii and Associate Prof Cheah Kok Ming, faculty members of the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore, ADERA have chosen the theme of pedagogy, design and research on Modern Heritage of South East Asia for 2020’s symposium and meeting to spur into action the varied interests in this network.

Papers from the participating schools reflect within their respective programs of education, their techniques and theories for revitalizing an era of architecture that represented the pasts of colonization, the futures of post-war nation-building, and industrial-economic transformations. In other words, edifices of recent times that most of us are familiar, and which have supported the lives of many urban communities.