Winter Greetings from Design Trust | Message from Executive Director

Message from Marisa Yiu, Co-Founder / Executive Director

Design Trust wishes you happy holiday season and New Year with good health, energy and seasonal celebration. The year of 2023 is a special moment when we look back to the growing community of Design Trust, an initiative of Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design since 2007, while envisioning the next decade for our organisation. We look forward to sustaining the spirit and power of collaboration for the New Year of 2024 Design Trust Decade and beyond. What we have achieved is truly a collective testament to our community to gather and support the ongoing inspirational research and granting projects to connect various generations and impact our city with optimism, energy and vibrancy to shape our cultural community. We remain grateful to our community for keeping collaborations alive; yet, remain with deepened awareness and show the resilience of our community, while actively looking to the future with a regional and international prospective.

With Design Trust Studio Inaugural Showcase opened to the public by appointment this year, I am thrilled to share we have supported over 560 grantees, fellows and mentee designers to date since 2014. More than nine years ago, we created this initiative with a sincere commitment to advance design competency, catalysing our programmes to benefit and inspire the public on the role of design, as well as supporting emerging scholars and designers research on urgent topics. Embracing the new decade of Design Trust, we will continue to share great works from past grantees and ongoing programmes, while crafting new grants and fellowship schemes for visionary research that will benefit and impact Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and internationally.

Recently, we saw research and design projects supported by our Design Trust Feature and Seed Grants being presented at leading international exhibitions and platforms. Creative works developed from Feature Grant projects including “Hong Kong Estate Centres as Public Amenity” led by Jeffrey Cheng and Kris Provoost, and “Automated Landscapes: Architectures of Work without Workers” led by Marina Otero Verzier and Het Nieuwe Instituut were presented at the 18^th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia 2023, while Feature Grant recipient Wang Naiyi curated  “Care Pavilion” at London Design Biennale 2023 with Care manifesto, Collective-care initiatives and ‘Care-full’ practices. Continuing the research momentum, Feature Grant recipient Bob Pang and his team launched the publication “Unknown Brutalism Architecture in Hong Kong” with an archive exhibition. The book introduces twenty Hong Kong brutalist architecture projects and twelve architect’s stories, whose designs bring to an international audience on the local landscape of Hong Kong case study projects in Brutalism.

Apart from international outreach, we remain focused on Hong Kong, as well as its neighbouring cities and region. In 2017, we expanded our work with the DESIGN TRUST FUTURES STUDIO programme – building public space prototypes and pilot projects, engaging with private and public sectors to innovate on heritage, and examining the positive elements of smallness in design to make larger impacts. This community think-tank programme continues to grow in strength with the opening of the latest Hamilton Street Rest Garden in July 2023, marking the completion of all four pilot micro-parks since 2018 Design Trust Futures Studio “Play is for the People” programme.

With the completion of four micro-parks Yi Pei Square Playground, Portland Street Rest Garden, Sitting-out Area under Flyover in Hill Road and Hamilton Street Rest Garden, we recently launched the micro-parks book “Design Trust Futures Studio: from Smallness, Playfulness to Community Impact” with an exhibition, providing an extensive review of Design Trust Futures Studio programmes, the subsequent construction process, as well as documentation of the built parks, ongoing research survey and insightful reflections from the public, private and communities on the future of public space in Hong Kong. Celebrating more than five years of creative collaboration, the publication strives to provide valuable recommendations in the region with a “Collective Creative Manifesto” inspired by continuing conversation with the participants through this journey. We are also pleased to share that the four pilot micro-parks have been recently awarded “Hong Kong Institute of Architects Merit Award of Hong Kong - Public Space/ Civic/ Communal Building” category in recognition of excellence in architecture on November 8th 2023.

Reflecting on collective knowledge production from our past and ongoing seventeen M+/ Design Trust Research Fellows and five Design Trust / RCA Fellows in Design Curation since 2014, we strive to expand and launch new design and research fellowship and programmes with existing and new partners in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Macau of the Greater Bay Area, and further to Shanghai; whilst amplifying our international cultural exchanges with key institutions in various cities worldwide. To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Design Trust and 17-18 years of Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design, we will reveal critical and visionary regional and international programmes in the coming March 2024 for the next decade of Design Trust.

To continue our work with optimism and focus, I would like to express gratitude to the continuous support of all members who have brought us to where we are today, Chairman, Board members in the last years and to the unwavering support of all the Trustees, Supporters, Partners, and Advisors to DESIGN TRUST to enable us to do what we are passionate about. With new challenges, changes in our environment to urgent social impact projects to continue with, we cannot thank again all the great work of community, and team members of our organization. On behalf of my team and colleagues, thank you again for your continuous support and generosity to our work in the foundation.

We thank you for entrusting in design, please join our community in supporting the growth of the design and cultural ecology here in Hong Kong, our region and our future. Sending our warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful winter season ahead, and a very happy new year. See you soon in 2024!

Stay healthy, creative and inspired!

Marisa Yiu,

Co-Founder /Executive Director, Design Trust

Winter 2023, Hong Kong