During Chinese New Year, routines and practices centred around the production of fortune unfold. Confronting the crisis of waste and inequality generated from the material pursuits of fortune, this thesis reimages how a different understanding of fortune can play out in the contemporary city, as revised traditions inculcating new meanings and practices concerned with the environment.

My thesis reframes ideas of ‘Fortune’ and its traditions that are now distant to contemporary livelihoods, grounding them within our everyday consumption practices. Through this, my project reimagines a more relational idea of fortune formed by enabling people to act as stakeholders and stewards of the environment.

Set within my hometown of Guangzhou, China, a network of temporary architectural interventions and festival landscapes imaginatively span across the city. Structured as a parade, the thesis follows the spatial and temporal movement of people preparing for and participating in Chinese New Year celebrations within familial homes and neighbourhoods, right up to their departure at the train station. The project relates these key spaces through collective pursuits of environmental ‘health’ and ‘wealth’. On the streets, mobile dragon floats collect discarded household objects and sunlight, wind and rain, transforming these elements into education resources, free energy, and a cleaner city. The Guangzhou Train Station turns into a seasonal orchard, producing fresh air, with an abundance of fruiting trees and wild ecology, thus safeguarding the happiness and health of the home-returning travelers. Through this festival landscape, the thesis transforms the production of fortune into a collective consciousness of the urban environment.