special lecture SEA Conversation
a nature focused design process
Asking Looking Playing Making
a nature focused design process
by Anna Liu and Mike Tonkin
Friday, 28 November 2025, at 6:00 pm
Asking, Looking, Playing, Making is a nature-focused storytelling design process with four stages. Developed through practice and teaching, it was first launched in 1999 in a book also titled Asking Looking Playing Making, published by Black Dog. The method has since been used in the studio of Tonkin Liu Architects for all of the practice’s projects, from design competitions to completed projects and internationally in schools of architecture.
The focus on nature was highlighted in the first publication and through the unit run by Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, which explored patterns of nature and human nature, and abstracting principles from nature as the basis for architectural design. Mike Tonkin’s practice-based PhD The Nature of Place, a nature-focused, place-specific, storytelling methodology, undertaken at the University of Bath, further developed the thesis for the design process.
Asking, Looking, Playing, Making herein known as ALPM, is intended for use by architecture students and practitioners and those in related fields interested in placemaking.
about
Mike Tonkin
Mike Tonkin qualified as an architect in 1989, the year he set up his practice. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in London in 1986 after receiving first-class honours at Leeds Polytechnic, having completed an apprenticeship as an architectural technician with training at Bath Technical College. His interest in nature led to his qualification as a landscape architect in 2014. He has taught for many years, including for a decade at the University of Bath and as a unit master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the University of Westminster and London Metropolitan. He has been an external examiner for the master’s courses at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and a longstanding visiting critic. He completed his PhD at the University of Bath and is currently a Visiting Professor of Architecture at the Manchester School of Architecture.
Anna Liu
Anna Liu qualified as an architect in 2002, after completing her Master of Architecture at Columbia University, New York, in 1994 and a liberal arts education encompassing chemistry and comparative literature at Smith College Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1987. Her experience has drawn from working in the UK, China and Japan where she discovered architecture, the US where she grew up, and Taiwan where she was born. She was a Quality Review panellist for the Euston HS2 Station and London Legacy Development Corporation. She has taught as a unit master at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the University of Westminster and London Metropolitan, and has been an external examiner at the Bartlett School of Architecture and at the University of Dundee. She is a trustee of the Open City charity, a Visiting Practice Professor at Sheffield School of Architecture, and an MArch external examiner at London Metropolitan University.
tonkin liu
Bridging teaching, research and practice, Tonkin Liu’s placemaking design approach has established a reputation for delivering award-winning projects that range from architecture to medical inventions, and from artworks to landscapes. Each project finds its creative origin in both cultural and natural contexts. The practice’s ambition has consistently been to bring people closer to nature, unifying nature and human nature.
The event is free and open to everyone.
