Winter Greetings from Design Trust | Message from Executive Director

Design Trust wishes you a wonderful holiday season and a New Year 2026 filled with good health and prosperity.

The year of 2025 marks a special time, as we saw a growing community of Design Trust’s grants and programmes benefitting over 663 creative individuals and collectives’ meaningful projects with more than 75,000 participants attending our public events over the years. As we envision the next phase of our organisation, its role for Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and within the international context, we remain truly humbled and grateful for the unwavering support towards our ongoing research and granting projects that connect generations and diverse backgrounds from our supporters and partners, who on many levels, are significantly contributing the impact and shaping our community with positivity, creativity, resilience and hope.

To date, DESIGN TRUST has built a strong network of over 663 creative individuals and collectives, supporting over 254 research projects through Seed & Feature Grants and Fellowship schemes. This initiative was created with a sincere commitment to advance design competency, catalysing our programmes to benefit and inspire the public on the role of design, and supporting emerging scholars and designers research on urgent topics that address societal needs. The recent tragedy in Tai Po, reminds us our role and civic duty as stakeholders of the society. We are deeply saddened by this devastation, and our sincere condolences go out to the families who have lost loved ones and to all those affected by this tragedy. We are grateful for the incredible courage and dedication of our firefighters, first responders, and everyone who has offered their support. Challenging times like these reinforce our commitment to harnessing the power of design to support and bring communities together. 

We are pleased to launch the Design Trust Fellowship at V&A East, as the first institution in the Greater Bay Area to partner with V&A East supporting creative practitioners to engage in research at V&A East Storehouse, fieldwork in Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and China where appropriate, culminating in a new creative work to be displayed at V&A East for a six-month duration. Under the 2025 theme of “the Stories of Clothes”, over 100 applications were received globally and two fellow teams Sian Fan, and Adam Huxley-Khng & Jimin Jeon are announced as the inaugural fellows of Design Trust Fellowship at V&A East. We continue to support Design Trust Graphic Archive Research Fellowship in partnership with HKDI, to conduct research on the history and development of graphic design, publishing and advertising from the 1940s to the 1980s in Hong Kong which will culminate in a large-scale exhibition in 2028.

At this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 Hong Kong Exhibition, we were also pleased to present the Design Trust Futures Studio Micro-parks project, together with four other Design Trust grant projects under the theme of “Projecting Future Heritage: A Hong Kong Archive” curated by Design Trust grant recipients Ying Zhou and Fai Au, with Sunnie SY Lau. The grant project featured at the Hong Kong Exhibition include “By Us For Us: Future Proof Narratives of a Third Housing for Hong Kong” by Guillaume Othenin-Girard & Kent Mundle, “Estate Centres, Postwar Public Amenities in Hong Kong Public Housing” by Jeffrey Cheng and Kris Provoost, “Social Condenser Extraordinaire: Hong Kong’s Municipal Services Buildings” by Ying Zhou and Fai Au, and “Photovoltaic Hybrids: Hong Kong’s Experiment on Climate-Responsive Architecture by Emily Po & Quentin Yiu. The exhibition also involved active participation from the extended Design Trust research network community where 15 Design Trust former and current grantees participated to represent Hong Kong on a global stage in this year’s Venice Biennale.

With a sincere commitment to Hong Kong’s rich heritage and natural landscape, we have launched the inaugural Design Trust Futures Festival 2025: “The Art of Transformation” at the 19^th century historic Murray House at Stanley Plaza supported by Link Asset Management Limited (Link). The festival has welcomed over 16,500 visitors from March 22nd to June 18th, 2025 with more than 40 events, tours and community programmes, collaborating with over 60 designers, architects and artists, the festival explores sustainability, culture, and heritage in Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area with an international context. A community of Design Trust researchers, scholars, global partners, and innovative designers participated in and shared further their ongoing work, from small scale site-specific commissioned works around themes of “Exceptional Transformations” with architectural significance, to the extraordinary heritage and natural context that enlivens conversations on the public realm. This festival continues to inform and inspire us on the importance of heritage research, activating underutilised public space assets, to inspire and gather community collaboration for the future edition of Design Trust Futures Festival as well as the ongoing Design Trust Futures Studio Greater Bay Area programme, crafting an explorative atlas for the region.

Design Trust Impact Grant Programme, Open House Hong Kong 2025, returned for a second consecutive year with the theme “What Makes a Good City?” to showcase over 80 sites across Hong Kong with more than 150 guided tours. A diverse range of buildings and sites that touches upon topics of education, heritage, culture and creativity, inclusive community, business innovation, recreation and leisure, and the environment. Over 1,000 participants joined the tours on the weekend of November 22^nd and 23^rd with the support from over 80 expert docents contributing to the community experience.

Following the devastating fire in Tai Po, Design Trust and the team of Open House Hong Kong 2025 made the difficult decision and canceled all remaining tours that were planned for the second weekend of November 29^th and 30^th. We are heartbroken by the tragedy, and our sincere condolences go out to the families who have lost loved ones and all those affected. Challenging times like these reinforce our commitment to harnessing the power of design to bring communities together, spark meaningful dialogue, and nurture resilience in our urban environment through our grants, fellowship schemes and wide range of programmes and community events.

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, enabling us to do what we are passionate about, and thank you again for all the great work of our community, and team members of our organisation.

On behalf of my team and colleagues, we thank you for entrusting design. Please join our community in supporting the growth of the design and cultural ecology here in Hong Kong, and beyond. Stay safe, healthy and inspired during the holiday season. See you in 2026!

Best,

Marisa Yiu

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