Hong Kong Tile Chairs
At every corner of the city, covering towers, public housing, MTR stations, wet markets and maritime infrastructure, is the small ceramic tile. As an embodiment of the civic experience of Hong Kong, the tile is everywhere and nowhere – at once convenient and attractive, minuscule and abundant, familiar and protean. “Hong Kong Tile Chairs” honors this unsung hero of cladding, and invites the public to a microcosmic experience of the city’s urban vernacular by summoning its most recognizable built attributes – foundation pillars straddling a cliff, stacked outdoor loggias, slender pencil towers – and translating these standard elements using bespoke handmade tiles. This reimagining of mundane material results in a debate between art and utilitarianism, lending this public seating a highly idiosyncratic and personal quality to what would otherwise be standard.
At every corner of the city, covering towers, public housing, MTR stations, wet markets and maritime infrastructure, is the small ceramic tile. As an embodiment of the civic experience of Hong Kong, the tile is everywhere and nowhere – at once convenient and attractive, minuscule and abundant, familiar and protean. “Hong Kong Tile Chairs” honors this unsung hero of cladding, and invites the public to a microcosmic experience of the city’s urban vernacular by summoning its most recognizable built attributes – foundation pillars straddling a cliff, stacked outdoor loggias, slender pencil towers – and translating these standard elements using bespoke handmade tiles. This reimagining of mundane material results in a debate between art and utilitarianism, lending this public seating a highly idiosyncratic and personal quality to what would otherwise be standard.
- 2020
- Grantee: Nils Axen
Nils Axen is an architect and designer originating from New York City, with his Bachelors of Architecture from Cornell University. He has worked in New York and Rotterdam and is currently employed at the Office for Metropolitan Architects in Hong Kong. His professional experience includes ambitious retail interiors and cultural projects executed in China and South Korea. As part of a team awarded a Design Trust Seed Grant in 2019, Nils studied the complex role retail plays in shaping the city’s public identity within the publication “Learning from Hong Kong, A Tale of the Mall City.” In addition to practical design experience, Nils is a ceramic artist and illustrator with a fascination for the unique urban vernaculars of Hong Kong.