Angela
Ka Ki Lee

Angela Ka Ki Lee is a Franco–Hong Kong architect and professor whose transdisciplinary practice moves between spatial design, socio-ecological inquiry, and curatorial research. She explores spatial ecologies, invisible infrastructures, and the hidden metabolisms of urban environments through the lens of new materialism, positioning architecture as a medium for collective inquiry and planetary imagination. Her work combines field-based investigations, material prototyping, and participatory protocols. Since 2010, she has collaborated with international NGOs, approaching architecture as a meeting ground between design, psychology, pedagogy, and social engagement.

Her current research investigates the concept of the Energyocene, tracing the metabolisms of hidden energy infrastructures and underground georesources—often invisible technically, conceptually, and culturally. She argues that this culture of hiding prevents energy transitions from addressing their critical stakes. Her projects seek to unlearn and unveil these systems—from extraction and regulation to ecological impact and everyday experience. By reframing infrastructures as cultural, ecological, and social forces, and by developing experimental methods with cross-disciplinary input and bottom-up interventions, she aims to open poetic imaginaries of the commons and new forms of collective responsibility within planetary urbanism.

The DAAD Arts and Media program, the City of Potsdam and the Research Institute for Sustainability – Helmholtz Centre Potsdam (RIFS) have launched a new fellowship programme, the ‘Planetary Transitions: Potsdam Artist Residency’. The fellowship is open to artists from abroad or those who have only recently moved to Germany and will be realised at the RIFS. The fellows work on their projects on campus and are supported in networking with researchers at RIFS as well as cultural and scientific institutions in the greater Potsdam/Berlin area.

Photo: Constanze Flamme