Winter Greetings from Design Trust | Message from Executive Director

Message from Marisa Yiu, Co-Founder, Lead Curator/ Executive Director

Design Trust wishes you happy holiday season and New Year with good health, energy and seasonal celebration. The year of 2024 was a special moment where we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Design Trust, an initiative of the Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design since 2007, while envisioning the next decade for our organisation and its role for Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area within an international context. What we have achieved today, is truly a collective testament to our community to gather and support the ongoing inspirational research and granting projects that connect various generations, and impact our city and region with optimism, energy and vibrancy to shape our cultural community. We remain grateful to our supporters and partners for keeping collaborations alive; yet, remain with deepened awareness to build resilience of our community, how creativity, curiosity and critical research and design, positively shape our future.

Over the last ten years, DESIGN TRUST has built a strong network of over 608 creative individuals and collectives supported by our grant funding and community platform. We created this initiative with a sincere commitment to advance design competency, catalysing our programmes to benefit and inspire the public on the role of design, as well as supporting emerging scholars and designers research on urgent topics. We are proud to support and witness Design Trust Feature Grant research projects “Countryside, The Future” from AMO team at the Guggenheim Museum in 2019, “Look: The Graphic Language of Henry Steiner”, seminars and workshops at HKDI in 2021, to more recently the publication launch of “Automated Landscapes: Architectures of Work without Workers” led by Marina Otero Verzier and Het Nieuwe Instituut at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia 2023, and the Matters of Care exhibition at the inaugural Guangzhou Design Triennial 2024 curated by Feature Grantee Wang Naiyi. Continuing the research momentum, Feature Grant recipient Bob Pang and his team launched the publication “Unknown Brutalism Architecture in Hong Kong” with an archive exhibition, while renowned architect and grant recipient Raymond Fung launched the English publication “The Untold Stories: Hong Kong Architecture” leading us to keep exploring the rich layers of architectural landscape of Hong Kong of over 70 stories, both of which received AIA Hong Kong Chapter’s Community Citation 2024.

In celebration of 10th anniversary of Design Trust and the Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design since 2007, we launched the new programme "Design Trialogues" as Design Trust Decade Talks 2024 featuring former Design Trust Feature Grant recipient and Pritzker Architecture Prize recipient Rem Koolhaas (Founder of OMA & Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design, Harvard GSD) as the Inaugural Design Trialogues Keynote Speaker at Tai Kwun on Sept 14^th 2024, along with Sarah M. Whiting (Dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture, Harvard Graduate School of Design) and guest respondents Christine Loh, Doreen Heng Liu, Donald Choi and Stephan Petermann. Design Trust Decade Talks brought together former student members of Rem Koolhaas from 1990s: Kate Orff, Nancy Lin, Stephanie Smith, Bernard Chang, Mihai Craciun, Yuyang Liu from the world-renowned 1996 Project on the City team and their seminal publication on the Pearl River Delta region, who are all now leading designers and scholars, to converse with Design Trust grant recipients architects, designers and scholars: Adonian Chan, Bob Pang & Charles Lai, Paul Tse & Evelyn Ting, Elaine Yan Ling Ng, Ashley Scott Kelly and Zhang Lei to collectively discuss the topical issues, while envisioning the future role of design from Hong Kong to the region and internationally.

We are also excited to support the inaugural edition of Open House Hong Kong 2024 with a team of Design Trust members of grant recipients to design scholars including Kay Chan, Helen Fan, Charles Lai, Kevin Mak, Bob Pang and Sampson Wong to advocate for architectural heritage and urban culture of Hong Kong for the knowledge and benefit of the public. More than 1600 visitors have joined 95 tours to around 50 sites and buildings across the city. 94 volunteers from the public community and 60 expert docents from the academia and industry supported the festival unveiling the hidden stories to the public.

Apart from international outreach, we remain focused on Hong Kong, as well as its neighbouring cities and region. In 2017, we expanded our work with the DESIGN TRUST FUTURES STUDIO programme – building public space prototypes and pilot projects, engaging with private and public sectors to innovate on heritage, and examining the positive elements of smallness in design to make larger impacts. This community mentor-mentee think-tank programme continues to grow in strength with the completion of the micro-parks, involving more than 360 individuals over the past six years as a testament of cross-disciplinary creative efforts and public private community partnership, with recognitions from 2024 AIA Hong Kong Community Citation Award, 2023 Hong Kong Institute of Architects Merit Award of Hong Kong - Public Space/ Civic/ Communal Building category and Perspective A&D Silver Award in Best Public Space category, and 2021 DFA Design for Asia Awards Grand Award. With a sincere commitment to heritage research and innovation, we have also worked with our partners including Hong Kong Palace Museum and Haw Par Mansion to reimagine the future of heritage and cultural legacies. Looking forward, we are excited to launch DESIGN TRUST FUTURES STUDIO Greater Bay Area programme “Nature is Nurture is Nature” crafting a visionary and explorative creative atlas for the Greater Bay Area Region with an international context while envisioning the future of Greater Bay Area through cultural research and design experimentation.

To continue our work with optimism and focus, I would like to express gratitude to the continuous support of all members who have brought us to where we are today, Board Members and Chairman: Kamsen Lau, Jonathan Cheung (JC), Denise Lau, Gabriela Kennedy, Ivan Pun; to the unwavering support of all the Trustees, supporters, partners, and advisors to DESIGN TRUST to enable us to do what we are passionate about, and thank again all the great work of our community, and team members of our organization.

On behalf of my team and colleagues, we thank you for entrusting in design, please join our community in supporting the growth of the design and cultural ecology here in Hong Kong, our region and our future. Sending our warmest thoughts and best wishes for a wonderful winter season ahead, and a very happy new year. See you soon in 2025!

Stay healthy, creative and inspired!

Marisa Yiu,

Co-Founder, Lead Curator/ Executive Director, DESIGN TRUST

Winter 2024, Hong Kong