On the occasion of Milano Arch Week 2025 we present a lecture by architect Joshua Bolchover titled Becoming Urban: Developing Districts Unit by Unit.

The world’s climatic future hinges on how developing regions grow. Developing economies are projected to increase their emissions by 5 billion tons while the rest of the world plateaus or declines. The lecture will present prototyping as a method to generate new models of housing and community infrastructure that offer scalable alternatives to current forms of building. Strategies developed in Bolchover’s ongoing work in Nepal, Mongolia and the Philippines will demonstrate this approach and the challenges of working in rapidly urbanizing emerging economies, struggling with the processes of becoming urban.

Joshua Bolchover is an architect and Professor at The University of Hong Kong. His work focuses on innovating design strategies in regions undergoing rapid urban transformation.