Design Trust Grants & Fellowship Announcements

21. 12. 2020

Design Trust is pleased to announce that Nils Axen (Hong Kong, New York), Elaine Kwong (Los Angeles/ Hong Kong), Zoey Chan Tsz Yiu (Hong Kong), and Dr. Gianni Talamini and colleagues at The City University of Hong Kong and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, are the grant recipients of the Design Trust October 2020 grant cycle, and two fellows Emily Verla Bovino and Anouchka van Driel are the recipients of the M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship 2021. In view of the latest developments of the COVID-19 epidemic, the deadline for applications of the January 2021 cycle will be extended to noon, 20 February 2021. Share with us your ideas and proposals through our new online grant application system.

“Hong Kong Tile Chairs” project proposal by Nils Axen

“Hong Kong Tile Chairs” by Nils Axen explores and honors the city’s most ubiquitous cladding material and abstracts its urban vernacular into a bespoke design for public seating. 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, lends this public seating a highly idiosyncratic and personal quality to what would otherwise be standard.

“Evolving Heritage: Taishan Commons in the Post-industrial Society” project proposal by Elaine Kwong

“Evolving Heritage: Taishan Commons in the Post-industrial Society” by Elaine Kwong aims to develop alternative frameworks for heritage conservation and rural development in peripheral counties in the Greater Bay Area, Guangdong. Critiquing the common use of heritage in China as a political and economic resource for new development, the research proposes that heritage should be viewed as a socio-ecological system that generates sustainable urban evolution. As new modes of urbanity encroach upon the very definition of rurality, one must reimagine how these places can adapt, live, and thrive in the twenty-first century. The research advocates that governance systems should maintain a level of autonomy that reflects the diversity of ecological conditions in the existing landscape. Through a nuanced analysis of the evolution of spatial politics and urban typologies, the research will display an effective social governance and advocate for the recuperation of this declining local power as the key stakeholder for rural development. In 2019, Elaine was awarded the South China University of Technology Foreign Lecturer Grant to direct the research and curate the exhibition “Incremental Urbanism: Evolving Collective Forms in Taishan, China” at the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture & Urbanism. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from USC School of Architecture and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

“Hong Kong: A catalogue of Toponyms (香港地名繪)”  project proposal by Zoey Chan Tsz Yiu

“Hong Kong: A catalogue of Toponyms (香港地名繪)” by Zoey Chan aims to catalog the Hong Kong’s toponymy in illustrations as a creative rediscovery and documentation process to preserve the region’s historical, cultural and geographical landscape and identity of places, initiating a dialogue on place naming/ making and village branding in the society. Toponym offers insight of the geographical and cultural landscape and our association with “place”. Some local place names, especially in rural villages, are at risk and disappearing due to development, imposition or change in geographical features.The project will explore the etymology and evolution of these everyday vocabularies and visualizes the findings for the general public, promoting our understanding of Hong Kong’s diverse landscapes and to rebrand these vanishing sites. The toponymic database aims to provide an insight to the regional affairs in terms of administration, planning, mapping, sustainable development as well as local tourism.

“Horizontal Hong Kong: A Paradigm Shift” project proposal by Dr. Gianni Talamini and colleagues at The City University of Hong Kong and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland.

“Horizontal Hong Kong: A Paradigm Shift” an international exhibition by Dr. Gianni Talamini and colleagues at The City University of Hong Kong and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Displaying an emerging model of urbanisation, the exhibition will present the investigation of worldwide non-hierarchical territories through the prism of theories, scenarios, and design strategies. Horizontal urbanisation is a constitutive process of an emerging form of dwelling that builds upon a close interlink of urban infrastructures and bioregional ecologies, and in which spatial relationships are fundamental agents for economic reproduction. As a place-dependent process, it gives rise to infinite variations, six of which are investigated and illustrated by this project.

In view of the latest developments of the COVID-19 epidemic, the deadline for applications of the January 2021 cycle will be extended to noon, 20 February 2021. Design Trust is also pleased to share that applicants will be able to submit their project proposals through a dedicated application platform on our website from 20 February 2021. The platform will provide a comprehensive dashboard for applicants to submit materials, track their progress and manage their application history.

 

“China and the Cosmotechnics of Fashion” project proposal by Anouchka van Driel

We would also like to congratulate two fellows Emily Verla Bovino and Anouchka van Driel as recipients of the M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship 2021.

“Miniature as Method: Learning from Hong Kong Urban Design in Micro-Scale” by Emily Verla Bovino investigates Hong Kong miniature through exhibition histories, interviews and conversations. Micro-scale models of everyday life are sponsored by companies whose investments facilitate the vanishing of customs and environments that miniatures celebrate. Through case studies and ground research on micro-modellers, miniaturists, enthusiasts and collectors, the project sheds light on Hong Kong miniature as both a design field and a means to study, and encourages more interest in urban design.

 

“China and the Cosmotechnics of Fashion” by Anouchka van Driel explores the interconnected relationship between fashion as a visual language and social practice. Deploying techno-philosopher Yuk Hui’s concept of  ‘Cosmotechnics’ as a lens to frame recent developments in the fashion sector in China, the project aims to explore the changing dynamics between designer and consumer mediated by online platforms and its subsequent impact on design, production and consumption. 

 

The M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship programme supports original research projects investigating issues relating to design and architecture in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area, and Asia through a transnational lens. In addition to expanding the current body of knowledge in these areas, the fellows’ research will inform M+’s collections-building and public programmes.

 

Researh Fellows engage in advanced research on historical or contemporary topics relating to either a single discipline (such as architecture, graphic design, industrial design, and urbanism) or cross-disciplinary developments, taking into consideration the region’s cultural, social, economic, and political milieux as well as its international and cross-cultural networks. The successful applicants will be attached to M+ for three to six months in 2021, conducting independent research, encouraged to engage with the museum’s curatorial staff and participate in M+ programmes. The fellowship  results in 1) a paper (5,000 words or more) to be disseminated digitally or in print by M+ and Design Trust, or an equivalent outcome in an alternative format; and 2) a lecture as part of the museum’s public programmes.

 

The M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship programme is now in its 7th year, and past and current fellows include: Ling Fan (2015); Joseph Grima and the team of Daniel Cooper and Juliana Kei (2016); Thomas Daniell (2017); and Hugh Davies and the team of Fan Lok Yi and Sampson Wong (2018); Oliver Elser and Yasmin Tri Aryani (2019); Jason Lau and the team of Farzin Lotfi-Jam and Mark Wasiuta (2020).

 

Stay tuned for more details and official announcement here