The RHEA International Workshop Shelter with Pleasure (13–19 Sept 2025) explored how architecture can go beyond survival to actively enhance well-being, resilience, and collective life. Anchored in Zaha Hadid’s assertion that shelter must also provide pleasure, the workshop investigated extreme urban, climatic, and geopolitical conditions across Hong Kong (Kowloon), Odesa, and Los Angeles.

Students tackled dense post-reclaimed districts in Kowloon, proposing vertical greenery, green corridors, and waterfront reconnection to counter overcrowding, heat, flooding, and cultural erosion. In Odesa, under the realities of war and climate risk, proposals integrated bomb shelters into everyday public infrastructure, flood-mitigating landscapes, port transformation, and renewed public access to the waterfront. In Santa Monica, strategies focused on coastal dunes, wildfire resilience, fire-resistant urban form, and adaptive reuse of the airport as a major green and shelter hub.

Across all sites, the core actions were clear: CONNECT, MITIGATE, REVITALIZE. Shelter was redefined as an active system—ecological, social, and spatial—where safety, climate adaptation, identity, and pleasure coexist. The workshop demonstrated that speed, collaboration across time zones, and global-local thinking are no longer optional—they are the future of architectural practice.