Design Trust Celebrates Ten Years and Forges Ahead
Image by Yongki Sunarta, courtesy of Design Trust
Design Trust celebrates a decade of community-focused design initiatives with talks, tours and mentorship that illuminate and examine Hong Kong and its environs
Design Trust was founded in 2014 as a Hong Kong-based platform to support design scholars, researchers and practitioners; over the decade, its fellowships and partnerships have helped advocate positive roles for design across multiple disciplines.
One regular fixture is the organisation’s series of talks, which this year celebrated its milestone anniversary with the inaugural Design Trialogues, the brainchild of Design Trust co-founder, lead curator and executive director Marisa Yiu. A highlight of the event was a keynote speech by former Design Trust Feature Grant recipient Rem Koolhaas, but it went far beyond one voice and also included Sarah M Whiting, the dean and Josep Lluís Sert Professor of Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the architect’s former student participants of the world-renowned 1996 Project on the City Harvard GSDteam: Kate Orff, Nancy Lin, Stephanie Smith, Bernard Chang, Mihai Craciun and Yuyang Liu. The group produced a seminal publication on the Pearl River Delta region, and the former team members are all now leading designers and scholars themselves. The event saw them in conversation with Design Trust grant recipients —architects, designers and scholars including Adonian Chan, Bob Pang and Charles Lai, Paul Tse and Evelyn Ting, Elaine Yan Ling Ng, Ashley Scott Kelly and Zhang Lei — in a series of panels on topical issues and the future role of design in the region and internationally with insights from guest respondents.
The day also marked the launch of the inaugural Open House Hong Kong 2024 supported by Design Trust. Across two weekends, participants explored the city’s under-appreciated cultural and architectural diversity, including the brutalist Chinese Methodist Church designed by Wai Szeto and the public housing estates Clague Garden Estate and Cho Yiu Chuen, both guided and informed by Design Trust Seed Grant recipients who had researched the landmarks. Other destinations included designs by grant recipients and designer mentees, such as the four micro-parks from the Design Trust Futures Studio initiative.
Looking ahead to 2025, a key programme will be the next iteration of Design Trust Futures Studio Greater Bay Area, curated by Yiu and associate curator Zheng Zhou. Centred on the theme Nature is Nurture is Nature, the programme investigates the future of the Greater Bay Area. Across three years, the mentorship programme aims to create a ‘visionary explorative creative atlas for the Greater Bay Area Region’, in which creative mapping and physical-digital representation will examine production and trade flows around the region.
Clague Garden Estate. Image courtesy of Rico Samuel Diedering and Pedram Ghelichi
Design Trust Futures Studio micro-park, sitting-out area under flyover in Hill Road. Image courtesy of Design Trust
Design Trust Futures Studio micro-park, Portland Street Rest Garden. Image courtesy of Design Trust