Secret Societies
The precarious reality for small businesses in Hong Kong is the consequence of their lack of stepping ground in a competitive market. Although these independent entities are essential to the enrichment of urban life, and they contribute significantly to the social-economic diversity of neighborhoods, their obsolete business model presents an inflexible way of functioning in a world that is on the contrary seeking for flexible commitments.
The precarious reality for small businesses in Hong Kong is the consequence of their lack of stepping ground in a competitive market. Although these independent entities are essential to the enrichment of urban life, and they contribute significantly to the social-economic diversity of neighborhoods, their obsolete business model presents an inflexible way of functioning in a world that is on the contrary seeking for flexible commitments.
For that reason, the solution can be the creation of a platform that we are naming Secret Societies, which removes small businesses from their sedentary obligation to a monthly mortgage, the burdens of unprofitable schedules, and the risk of a large starting capital, to replace it with a system of rentable mobile vending carts fittingly designed for the street parking of Hong Kong and managed through a smartphone application by an entire community.
- 2021
- Grantee: Felix Chun Lam and Yi Ran Weng
Chun Lam is Hong Kong-born architectural and industrial designer based in Toronto, Canada. With his partner Yi Ran Weng, they founded naïvepeopledesign in 2017, a design studio focused on public installations and acupuncture architectural solutions. Previously, he has worked for numerous design offices throughout Asia including Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Hong Kong, Space Modification Unit in Beijing, and Atelier Tekuto in Tokyo. Chun holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Environmental Design with the highest distinction from Dalhousie University School of Architecture, and a Bachelor of Industrial Design from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. In 2018, Chun with Yi Ran were recipients of the University of Toronto Fellowship in Architecture, Landscape, and Design. Prior to architecture, he also designed and fabricated specialty custom USB drives for the manufacturing industry in Vancouver, Canada.
- Organisation: Naïvepeopledesign
naïvepeopledesign is a young multidisciplinary design practice founded by Yi Ran Weng and Chun Lam in 2017. Previously, they have won numerous awards including the International Cook8 Competition, for which they have built Nefos, a restaurant pavilion for the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece and the International Beach Hut competition in Paphos, Cyprus with their proposal Eat, Play, Move, Pray, Love. Recently, the work of naïvepeopledesign has been shortlisted by the Dubai Design Week and the Hong Kong Arts Council. They have also been featured in the Deep City: Climate Crisis, Democracy, and the Digital Symposium at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the University of Hong Kong with their project Secret Societies. Currently, naïvepeopledesign in collaboration with Abubakr Bajaman and Mariya Krasteva is preparing to build a pavilion as part of the Secret Societies proposal for the 2021 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism in South Korea.