The ‘Taxon | Archive | Lab – Library’ or, TAL-L, is a database and teaching tool for landscape materials. Open and extendable, it indexes the varied materials that make up Hong Kong’s constructed terrain, recording the material alterations, extractions, and accumulations within its physical composition over time. The project reflects on the environmental challenges of contemporary material design and specification in landscape architecture and challenges designers and educators to restore traditions of making and material experimentation within our public realm.

TAL-L is an ongoing research initiative led by Susanne Trumpf and Ivan Valin, instructors and scholars from the Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. This exhibition is co-curated by Ceci Sze Lee Wong.