“DESIGN TRUST: Critically Homemade”, a micro-initiative curated by Marisa Yiu (Co-Founder / Executive Director of Design Trust), is part of an effort to draw solutions from the pandemic’s impact on Hong Kong’s design community and beyond, and to inspire creative collaboration in a time of physical distancing.
Responding to a survey driven by the Board of Directors and leadership team within the community during the earlier months of 2020, participants of the survey reflected a desire to connect, collaborate and create, despite such unprecedented times of isolation. The initiative invites Design Trust grantees, fellows, advisors, Design Trust Futures Studio (DTFS) mentors and mentees, as well as the extended design community to create and prototype an object (sized 20 x 20 x 20cm max) from home that responds to and offers solutions to current societal and environmental challenges. Participants are encouraged to collaborate and design for a wide range of audience and think of how the object fosters play and well-being in the community.
With the greater intention to give back, we hope these objects created can eventually benefit the wider community. The event culminates in an exhibition planned for September 2020 and after a vetting procedure, will have a chance to be further developed.
“The desire to make things with our hands is universal and a significant human expression”, explains Marisa Yiu. “While some handicrafts are means of survival, making objects with our hands serves as a creative release. Restricted by the necessary social distancing during an unprecedented pandemic, many designers have expressed a need to connect, collaborate and create.”
So far, the initiative has reached out to designers based in Hong Kong as well as the international design community. Michael Young (Michael Young Studio) and Sam Jacob (Sam Jacob Studio), who were both DTFS mentors, are among the first designers taking part in the initiative. Young has devised a set of fluid repellent and anti-bacterial metal door handles made using lasers and photonics technology with tailored roughed exterior inspired by the hydrophobic surface of lotus leaves. The initiative has also received support from the extended design community -- Joshua Ng, co-founder of Hong Kong-based Twins Kitchen is taking his signature revolutionary approach to food design into the mix; while Douglas Young, founder of lifestyle brand G.O.D., has signed up to add touches of quintessential Hong Kong spirit.
Florian Wegenast and Christine Lew, Seed Grantees and DTFS mentees of the Totem Tile Lights for Haw Par Mansion at the 2019 DTFS “Heritage is Innovation” programme, created the “Hong Kong Brick”, a design artefact created from the construction waste of shops that went out of business during the covid-19 crisis. The prototype is showcased in a form of a brick to not only reflect the current situation in Hong Kong, but also features the duality of how bricks are the foundation of rebuilding something new.
Adonian Chan, a Seed Grantee and graphic designer and researcher of the “Beiwei Kaishu” typeface, created cookie-cutters in the form of this uniquely Hong Kong font. The concept is to create something more positive, digestible and light-hearted whilst alluding to the underlying darkness of humanity.
Elaine Ng Yan Ling, a Feature Grantee and founder of The Fabrick Lab, explores the value of family and the fundamentals of heritage craft in her stitching prototype, weaving in patterns that were inspired by her research trips to Guizhou villages.
For more details on the initiative, and to check out what other participants have come up with so far, please head to: designtrust.hk/critically-homemade
