Programme

Celebrating design excellence of the international design trailblazers, young design talents, and design projects with impact in Asia and for Asia from 5 award programmes.

What role does design play in ensuring that our next-generation designers and creatives have the right competencies to adapt and ride with the tide? Adopting a creative mindset is crucial for us to meet the challenges we are facing today. It is especially important for creative leaders, architects, designers and academics from diverse disciplines and their collaborators to lead by example, to forge a way towards a sustainable future and create more liveable conditions for generations to come.

By 2050, an estimated 6.2 billion people or 70 percent of the global population will be living in cities. But the increasing climate risks in urban areas will have widespread negative impacts over people, economies and ecosystems, including health, livelihoods and assets. Action in urban centres is essential for successful climate change adaptation. Large-scale floating projects in an urban environment provide a tangible solution to these problems that is both flexible as well as sustainable. 

The future of transportation has always captured the vivid imagination of city dwellers, designers and innovators. With advancing technologies and innovations in infrastructure and business models, the revolution of modern transport has already begun, and ground-breaking, awe-inspiring transformations are happening sooner than we thought.

Understanding the impacts and opportunities water brings to an urban development has become essential in an age where floods and storm surges, the La Niña and the El Niño phenomena plague different parts our world. With case studies from our keynote speaker, we examine the new visions and solutions that enable city residents to live with water sustainably.

Modern city dwellers are calling for new habitats designed for circularity, urging architects and planners to rethink urban environments, ecological systems and holistic wellness, and develop alternate models that open up new possibilities for low-density residence and biophilic design. While we look at our ways to create liveable cities in the past and present, we try to envision what our future habitats would look like, and examine what it really takes to realise this new vision.

Innovation in modern cities can transcend the material dimension and improve aspects like sociability, access, comfort, image and more; and design has the ability to empower this process, strengthen the bonds between people and create a sense of place. In this panel, we’ll look at the works from master designers and see how the power of design enables connections among individuals, groups and places.

The advent of digital technologies has changed the way we appreciate art, revolutionising every aspect from the media to the experience. Immersive displays and poetic scenography are taking exhibitions to the next level, where boundaries of our imagination are challenged and pushed, offering new perspectives for audiences to rediscover masterpieces and iconic works.

Propelled by remarkable creative projects citywide, Hong Kong is on the cusp of a cultural renaissance, a movement that creative placemaking can make significant contributions to. It allows people to build social and cultural capital, and gives them a sense of the present, past and future. With this panel discussion, we set out to find answers on how we can grow and sustain our creative community, and help our city to become a better place.

New cultural infrastructure has forged new pathways and has allowed for change in the way art institutions, museums, academic structures, and organisations exchange knowledge, collaborate and co-create programmes in the post-pandemic era. In this panel, representatives from Hong Kong’s leading non-profit art institutions will share their vision for moulding the future of Hong Kong’s art scene and helping preserve Hong Kong’s status as a prominent art hub in Asia.

The potentiality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to benefit the textiles and fashion industries is viable, at the same time playing an important role in re-industrialisation roadmap in the textile industry. By extracting information from large quantities of data, the technology offers insights that backs the creative intuition with data, ultimately turning industrial chains into more efficient, sustainable, and personalised one.

The old, linear way of food production and its consumption has brought disastrous impact to our environment. Following the ‘farm-to-table' and ‘farm-to-bar' movement, how do we leverage what we’ve learned, aided by the power of design, to better prepare restaurants and bars for circularity? Let’s hear it from the innovators and pioneers, whose work have sparked a green revolution in gastronomy and inspired internal changes among people.

A group of Dutch designers, founders of the famous Droog design movement in 1993, who focused on sustainability, a concept new to design, demonstrated the vision and determination required to go against convention and break new grounds. Since then, the Netherlands has become one of the biggest advocates of circular design, with innovative works from iconic designers that open up new horizons of eco-friendliness.

From defining user experience to product design, how brands speak to customers has never been more important. Understanding the consumer journey and responding to environmental and social changes will be critical to the success of companies. What can we learn from these prominent consumer brands? How will they anticipate, or even initiate future changes?

It is a new era for exhibitions. New technology has opened up unprecedented opportunities for exhibition designers, curators and institutions to forge new collaborations and encourage renewed appreciation of our common heritage. The creative tool of ‘Immersive Experience’ allows art curators to share knowledge and cultural learnings that resonate with the public.

Whether it’s traditional or modern, art exhibitions are taking an interdisciplinary approach that will transform and advance arts and culture by producing new experiences and creations through art tech and digitalisation. This interdisciplinary field merges the arts, design, technology, engineering and humanities to introduce a great variety of possibilities that help make Hong Kong an international arts and cultural hub.

The world is taking notice of Chinese brands. With design prowess and unique aesthetics, successful Chinese brands are translating the country’s rich heritage and traditional culture into brand values and innovations like no other. What should they do next to sustain and further their rise on the global stage?

The digital landscape of China is one of a kind, having a vast digital consumer base, influenced by intense pressure to quickly reach scale, and shaped by the government. It takes both vision and innovation for players to succeed in China’s digital ecosystem — and that’s why we spotlight on one of China’s most successful digital platforms to see what boundaries businesses should push, and how this redefines the companies’ organisational and operational capabilities.

Hong Kong is a fertile ground for innovation that is necessary to cultivate a new generation of creatives, designers and entrepreneurs, most of whom are taking interest in the application of new technologies and extensive digitisation. How will this impact our design ecosystem? And what does this mean for our creative industries?

New enterprises that approach operations creatively are trying well-tested strategies to actively transform their business models. In this panel, leaders of these companies will explore how such transformations result in better business and fulfillment of sustainability goals.

This session tackles complex, mobility-related issues including human sensorial design in transport systems, transit interactions, and emerging modes of transport like on-demand transport and autonomous vehicles. Driven by this vision, our panelists will focus on the challenges and opportunities of future mobility and discuss how to apply the principles of 'caring-moving’ to real-world scenarios.

While circular design brings new opportunities to every business operation and inspires change at both individual and organisational levels, it requires collaboration from various sectors where engineers, designers, start-ups and suppliers learn from each other. The Netherlands is one of the biggest advocates of circular design in the world, and the lessons they have learned along the way will be invaluable for us.

In the eyes of eco-conscious consumers, sustainability is one of the hallmarks of good design. While designers and manufacturers actively search for ways to improve their creations, collaborating with eco-friendly partners and shifting to environmental responsible practices are becoming equally important. We draw on the experiences of two design practitioners to see what these new standards of operation mean to their work.

As the linear ‘take, make, waste’ system is extensively studied, eco-friendly industry players are now armed with new knowledge to make a meaningful change. The works of these industry leaders are testimony to the importance of research.

The metaverse has already arrived, and it is changing how our realities are being shaped. Consumers are beginning to see the value in virtual platforms, and brands are striving to build stronger digital presence. The emergence of branded virtual worlds, as well as significant increase in investments in mixed, augmented and virtual realities indicate the metaverse are trending towards mainstream, with much of our lives taking place inside the virtual world.

With hyper-efficiency and versatility, AI has the ability to even translate conventional wisdom and observations into data, and provide dependable simulations and projections that help architects to make decisions. It promises to revolutionise how architects design, and blaze new pathways to build more-liveable cities that modern residents envision.

The essence of Asian design covers beyond eastern aesthetics and the continent’s cultural heritage. It embodies the appreciation of site-specific and context-driven sensitivity to design and architecture. It is also a continuous conversation between traditions, creativity and innovation that evolves over decades of time. In this panel, master designers will continue this dialogue from a fresh perspective, and offer new insights on contemporary Asian design.

Chi Wing Lo is an exemplar of a modern Renaissance creative who finds tremendous freedom in his own design and believes the artistic instinct is the fountain of all designs. We navigate his remarkable career and revisit his masterpieces across disciplines from architecture to furniture design.

Asia’s enormous population, diverse culture, language barriers and complicated history pose unique challenges for designers to communicate with their target audiences in the continent. How can design thinking inspire solutions?

Designers who boast global vision and local perspective are one of the indispensable drivers for change, offering fresh, unique takes on critical current issues. Here, we showcase our glocal talents who have demonstrated extraordinary abilities and potential, and ensure that Hong Kong would remain one of the most successful design hubs.

Design has tremendous power in shaping our world into a thriving, resilient and loveable place. Governments and their policy making would play a crucial role, setting the table for design-led innovation to shine. And to meet our needs and aspirations, how should individuals, communities, public and private agencies work together and co-create design solutions? We look at the work from best industry bodies of the world for inspirations.

Design empowers us to develop responsible solutions to current issues such as waste or climate change. Big, profound change could begin with little things - a small idea, a new creation, or even a choice of colour, could push the right buttons and bring significant impact to the way we live, produce and consume. Here, we study interesting cases brought by some of the most detail-minded and observant designers and see how details matter in a big way.

The studio is where ideas are generated, collaborators come together, and working methods take shape. More than a space, the studio represents a mindset and a vantage point. Two influential design teams, based in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, respectively, discuss the importance of studio practice to their work, highlighting how the process of creating is intertwined with conceptual aims.

The new generation of designers are going to be tasked to respond to social, technical, and environmental problems, and find solutions that transcend boundaries and involve actors from various sectors. How should design education cope with these new challenges? What changes to the system and infrastructure can be made? More importantly, how do we expand future designers’ capabilities and encourage innovation?

The enormous global challenges are urging us to rethink our ways, work together and develop more socially and environmentally responsible practices. Through interdisciplinary collaboration and democratic co-creation, designers and creative leaders have the opportunity to shape a more sustainable future and transform our lives. How will they take on this challenge?