Design Trust 2023 October Cycle Grant Recipients | January Cycle Call for Grants

Design Trust 2024 January Grant Application is now open. Since its establishment in 2014, Design Trust has been offering grant support to individual designers, curators, collectives as well as non-profit organisations. Share with us your ideas and proposals by 20th January 2024. We are also pleased to announce the Grant Recipients from the 2023 July grant cycle. The upcoming projects include research topics on urban design, Hong Kong architecture, built environment and visual communication.

Design Trust offers grants to individual designers, curators, collectives and non-profit organisations for projects and activities that are relevant to various design disciplines. These grants support projects relevant to the context and content of Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. Cities within the Greater Bay Area include: the two Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, and the nine municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing in Guangdong Province. We support innovative, thought-provoking investigations in various design disciplines from graphics, media, wearables, architecture to the built environment; and actively aim to accelerate creative design and research development of meaningful projects. These projects include but are not limited to: talks, exhibitions, residencies, research projects and creative installations.

DESIGN TRUST SEED GRANT fosters a culture of experimentation, testing and sharing. It is awarded to individuals seeking to kick-start a meaningful and intellectual project with social, educational, economical or environmental impact for communities. Seed Grants may support applicants who have a project in the pipeline that needs additional resources, as well as emerging designers, and young scholars. Design Trust highly encourages applicants from Hong Kong and the region to apply for this grant to support projects showcasing work at international venues, symposium or international biennales to showcase prototypes, or works relevant to architecture.

DESIGN TRUST FEATURE GRANT fosters cross-disciplinary projects focusing on the Greater Bay Area region. Projects awarded have a wide-reaching audience and may be sited in an exhibition or biennale venue with international recognition and standing. This grant supports international exchanges between a Hong Kong/ China based collective with an international renowned cultural institution. It aims to excel, share and build new knowledge and unique positions on the value of design, critical research and provocative outcome.

Grant Recipients from the 2023 October Grant cycle:

“Watts and Crops: Agrivoltaic farms in rural villages” led by Emily Po and Quentin Yiu, examines the multifaceted impacts of Agrivoltaic territorial projects on rural villages in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area. By studying past and future changes related to land use, resource allocation, and community dynamics, the study unravels the intricate interplay between this innovative energy-food co-production system and village social dynamics. The project aims to help the public to understand the potential and drawbacks of this technology and therefore facilitate new possibilities in sustainable rural development.

“Location, Imagination and Transformation: Grassroots Urbanism in Hong Kong Urban Cinema” by Zhuozhang Li, highlights Hong Kong urban cinema as an archive of descriptions through a cinematic urban topographical survey of everyday practices by the grassroots in contemporary Hong Kong. Through a series of architectural drawings, urban mappings, participatory photography, and analyses of varied layers of narratives in both real and reel cities, this project illustrates the complex nature of placemaking as an outcome of collective actions. The project is therefore attempting to reveal and expand a shared understanding of urban discourse in Hong Kong that transforms the material environment into a “lived” space, constructed by and accommodating all inhabitants in the city.

“Behind the Steles: Design and Culture of Engraving” by Westley Wong, examines the historical cemeteries and celebration steles in Hong Kong from an Eastern Asian perspective. Through a comprehensive analysis of these sites, including their design, architectural features, and the rituals associated with them, the project aims to gain insights into the cultural heritage and historical development of Hong Kong. It explores how Eastern Asian traditions, such as ancestor worship and Feng Shui principles, intersect with Western influences, resulting in a distinct blend of cultural practices. By examining the bi-lingual nature of inscriptions and the incorporation of Western architectural styles, the project delves into the broader cultural and social context of Hong Kong of its multicultural identity and the complex interactions between Eastern Asian and Western cultures.

“Uncanny City” by Grace Chee, explores how immersive experiential design in both physical form and virtual reality, can be a medium for storytelling. The design exploration employs physical installation and the virtual reality experience as a tangible reflection of the social, psychological, and emotional needs from the social context of Hong Kong today. The experience also speaks to everyday pressures inherent in urban living through surreal and exaggerated visual representations as a critique of the contemporary urban density and consumerism. The narrative-based virtual reality gameplay ultimately offers the participants autonomy to relieve and reflect on the urban life today.

“Social Condenser Extraordinaire: the Municipal Services Buildings of Hong Kong” led by academic Ying Zhou and Fai Au, proposes to analyze, and showcase to the broader public the extraordinary yet underrecognized body of indigenous public buildings in Hong Kong for the everyday, known as MSBs today, constructed largely in the 1980s and 1990s. Conceived of as urban nodes for public amenities including the market, food stalls, the library, and sports facilities, they have come to physically and conceptually manifest the civic ideals and climate adaptivity in one of the densest and most neoliberal cities in the world. Under threat by development today because of their central locations, this project is one of the first, to formally re-examine and showcase a selection of indigenous everyday public buildings of Hong Kong.

“Variations on Architectural Design of Hong Kong Public Housing Research Project” led by Rosman Wai, aims to analyse the relationship between the design variations of public housing and the development of Hong Kong in the past seven decades, to inspire contemporary designers with new thinking in dealing with similar housing issues in future and explore new possibilities in public housing design, community building and urban planning, not only for Hong Kong, but also other cities of the Greater Bay Area.