Designer Mentee: Florian Wegenast and Christine Lew (Recipient of Design Trust Seed Grant)
Hong Kong-based Mentor: Douglas Young
Lead Curator: Marisa Yiu (Co-founder/ Executive Director of Design Trust)
Design Brief:
The designers' intervention will integrate the building's artefacts, transforming them into lighting elements for the Mansion with a focus on sustainable materials. Artefacts from the Haw Par collection would be incorporated in the lighting object design to act in dialogue with the architectural features and the interior environment of the Mansion to create new interpretations.
"Our project challenges how conservation and heritage artefacts could be utilised and redesigned within a contemporary design context. The Totem Tile Lights are a collection of lighting installation that is designed to create a sense of discovery within Haw Par Mansion." - Florian Wegenast and Christine Lew
Designer Statement:
Highlighting the meaning of heritage, we wanted to utilise found materials onsite at Haw Par Mansion, including restoration glass, ceramic roof tiles, and floor mosaic tiles. Working with the design brief, we chose to work with roof tiles, whose pre-existing curve and shape mimics a ‘lamp-shade’ form; the heaviness of the roof tiles also create a nice contrast with the softness of light. As done so in our Future Sea Craft project, we repurposed our found material from the heritage site itself, but also brought a sense of local craft into our final object through the collaboration with a local metal craftsman to create the internal structure for the light system. Ultimately, we were inspired by the traditional lighting sources found in the mansion, where most lights are traditional chandeliers or lantern-shaped lights. We investigated how we could incorporate these traditional light design forms whilst utilising repurposed materiality to reinterpret the light object for a modern Haw Par Mansion.
ask@designtrust.hk
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