Grant Recipients from the 2024 October Cycle:
“Breaching Sanctum” Publication by Ingrid Pui Yee Chu, is a publication expanding upon the exhibition of the same title supported by Design Trust Feature Grant in F Hall Studio at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong in May, 2022, showcasing commissioned art and design works alongside related research/reference materials, and public programmes. The project and publication delves into the work of a generation of Chinese women artists, designers, and architects born in the 1980s and the influence of that era, alongside current developments, innovations, and pressures connected to urbanism, sustainability, and the built environment, on their work.
“Water Remembers: Restoring the Vanished Cultural Landscape” by Island Studies Network (ISNHK) and Tamshui Woo Tam Ming, is a research project inspired by the spatial settings of Ma Wan, located at the threshold between the Pearl River Delta. The project focuses on the fishermen groups and other coastal communities in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area, documenting their cultural memory through the dragon boat tradition. The goal is to sustain and pass down local maritime knowledge and skills to future generations. The project will showcase the work of designer Tamshui and ISNHK in capturing the boat's movements and illustrating how they employ temporal tactics to navigate present spatial discontinuities. The proposed exhibition, feature talks, and workshops will present opportunities to explore organic archiving methods for water communities, witnessing how cultural landscape can be preserved.
“Forgotten Heritage: A documentation of abandoned graded historic buildings” by Erica Yick Ki Kwong identifies and records histories, photographs, drawings, and stories of forgotten buildings, curates the research into an online source and publication, and will be launched for public access and continued contribution through an exhibition. Over 50 historic buildings have been abandoned, despite being officially graded by the Antiquities Advisory Board in Hong Kong. Their historic significance as individual buildings, and relevance to the development of the city is unrecognized as their historic information is not archived properly as a public property, having disparate levels of management and investigation from other historic buildings. The project aims to raise the public awareness about built heritage, and serve as a database to induce future research on heritage conversation and adaption.
“Novo Typo Offgrid Expo” by Mark van Wageningen includes the Novo Typo Offgrid exhibition at Sea World Culture and Arts Center in April 2025 in Shenzhen, a workshop, and a bilingual Chinese and English publication. The exhibition is conceptually built on three fundamental elements: letters, paper, and ink. At the exhibition, insights will be provided into how these three foundations, based on local Shenzhen raw materials, can be produced. This approach forms a transformation and translation to the Chinese context and environment. The exhibition visualizes how a Dutch universal design concept can be transformed and visually translated to a Chinese context, creating a dialogue with Chinese designers, students, and interested parties. It aims to serve as a source of inspiration and information for the cross-culture exchange of design research and practice.
“Borders Reopened: Regenerative Futures for Forbidden Landscapes in Sha Tau Kok” by Tsz Kwan Lai aims to digitally archive Sha Tau Kok’s unique built environment, as the area transitions from a historically restricted area to a more accessible landscape. Through site field surveys, the project will research the region's environment and residents' perspectives via photographic survey, video documentation, and urban analysis. This study will classify the historical context, architectural design language, and characteristics of the structures, documenting the interplay between the built environment and the natural in Sha Tau Kok region. By exploring the intersection of regenerative architecture and countryside conservation in the context of the recently reopened border, the project aspires to inspire regional affairs in terms of administration, planning, sustainable development as well as local tourism in the former closed frontier area.
“Archiving Archiving: Scoping” by Zara Arshad is a research project that explores archival cultures of design across East and Southeast Asia (ESEA). Adopting a transnational lens, the initiative has involved scoping, examining, and exchanging with independent and informal design archives across ESEA since 2021 including Malaysia Design Archive, Singapore Graphic Archives, The Book Society, and Hong Kong Design History Network. Titled Scoping, the chapbook will be the first published outcome of “Archiving Archiving”. This experimental publication spotlights the Hong Kong and Greater Bay contexts, inviting contributions from peers working in and collaborating with local and regional design archives. Contributors will reflect on key concepts, such as the politics and poetics of representation, embodied practices, climate and preservation, and archive experience.
“Island of Chicken Wings” by Bryan Wood, Jimmie Lu and Gabe Singer is a documentary that explores the history of Peng Chau from the perspective of “Chicken Wings Chan”, one of the longest continually-operating restaurants on the island. The restaurant experienced a boom in the 1980s with the opening of the nearby Peng Chau cinema, and the development of the neighboring Discovery Bay residential community. Years later, it saw a slump after the closure of several factories and the Peng Chau cinema in 1989. Despite these hardships, the Chan family that owns it has persevered in the decades since, continuing to serve up their delicious family recipes, while bearing witness to the rapid development of Hong Kong and the changing landscape of their small fishing community. This documentary centers the Chan family in the contemporary story of Peng Chau, revealing the larger socio-historical forces that have shaped life on the island and in the city beyond.
“Videotage Media Art Collection Kiosk” by Videotage aims to develop a mobile, flexible and inclusive station for the Videotage Media Art Collection (VMAC). By repurposing old furniture, this initiative not only activates VMAC’s legacy as a media art organisation that has been deeply rooted in Hong Kong for nearly four decades but also fosters new outreach opportunities within the community. Since its inception in 2008, VMAC has amassed a diverse collection of over 750 video works in addition to books and ephemera. From a small cinema to a mobile research desk, the group envisions this upcycled design project as a kiosk capable of being deconstructed and reassembled in various configurations, tailored to meet the diverse needs of users and various activity formats while sharing the video work archive to a wider community.
“Sail of Traditional Sampan: An Open Source Community Initiative for Wooden Boat Builders” by the Warehouse Teenage Club invites the public to appreciate the processes of local boat manufacturing and maintenance practice rooted in the urban history of Hong Kong. The Warehouse Teenage Club has been engaged in an Intangible Cultural Heritage project focusing on the traditional craft of wooden boat building and noticed that the craftsmanship is inaccessible for the public community. The team plans to implement an open-source initiative, making the wooden boat construction processes available to the public through various programmes and activities. A traditional sampan model kit will be developed to provide hands-on learning experience, including detailed instructions and historical background on wooden boats, in order to foster a deeper understanding of this valuable traditional craft with the community.
“ ‘Eel-ply’ fabrics: Fish skin as a biological textile model for new material design” by Dean Mason leverages biology, materials and design approaches to characterize skin of local freshwater eels, bridging university partners in Hong Kong, to develop a platform for bio-mimicked textiles, novel material discovery and translation. Marine biological materials provide a wealth of high performing sources for inspiration: anti-fouling coatings, high toughness scaffolds, brilliant structural colors and self-healing threads. Fish scales, in particular, have offered much fodder for biomimicry, particularly heavily armored or fast swimming species as inspiration for protective or hydrodynamic surfaces. Eel scales have a unique scale morphology and arrangement exhibiting special potentials for biomimicry that other fish scales might not have. The project intends to explore the possible application of such mechanical properties of eel skin, particularly relevant for ‘non-crimp fabric’ designs and low-friction, dynamic shielding/coatings.
