The Design Trust has invited architects, artists and designers to take part in a creative challenge that is a unique response to the times
Hands are haunting our collective consciousness this year. They star in public health campaigns around the world. Doctors rightly lecture us daily about what we should and should not do with them. Wash them this way. Don’t shake hands. Don’t touch your face, and never your eyes. If possible, wear gloves.
But to Marisa Yiu, hands are not terrifying—they’re comforting. “Making something with our hands is a core form of human expression and a creative release,” says Yiu, co-founder and executive director of Hong Kong-based charity Design Trust, a grant-funding platform that supports creative projects in Hong Kong and around the Greater Bay Area. “To make things with our hands is a universal act.”
Design Challenge
This idea inspired the Design Trust’s latest initiative, Critically Homemade, for which Yiu challenged architects, artists and designers to make a new object from home during the pandemic. She requested that the item respond to current social and environmental challenges and that it be no larger than 20 cm cubed, so that it can be cupped in someone’s hands. Otherwise, the creators had free rein. Roughly 70 of them rose to the challenge and their pieces are being shown this month on Design Trust’s website and at an exhibition at Soho House running from September 21 to October 4.
The objects range from the practical to the conceptual, and all of them explore how the Covid-19 pandemic has rocked the world. “Some designers have taken a moment to think, ‘2020 has been an extraordinarily stressful time. What can we do to reduce stress?’” says Yiu. Michael Leung, for example, crafted a calming incense holder; Frederic Gooris made a set of eco-friendly, stress-busting gym equipment; and Clara Brito designed a pair of slippers that gently massage your feet as you walk.
Others tackled the topic of how to keep children entertained at home, which People’s Architecture Office has answered with an origami colouring book. Creative agency Constant partnered with product designer Aurelien Barbry to design a light-hearted response to how to restore human connection in an age of social distancing: they have created a handheld, analogue megaphone, so people can talk to each other from metres apart.
See also: 10 Hong Kong Art Exhibitions To See In September 2020
New Priorities
“The pandemic has really forced us to re-evaluate what we value and how we can use design to improve our daily lives. Most architects and designers constantly want to make things for a better future—that’s the heart of the discipline,” says Yiu. “This is such an emotional period of time, but I’m a perpetual optimist.”
The digital showcase, Yiu adds, might just be the start. “We are showing the prototypes, which are excellent in and of themselves as examples of creative thinking. But the hope is that some retailer or brand like Kapok or GOD might see something and say, ‘Gosh, that’s such a brilliant idea, we want to fund it.’” If any of the products are picked up commercially, Yiu hopes proceeds will go to both the designer and Design Trust.
“We can’t hold our big fundraising gala as normal this year, so as a foundation we have to devise new ways to raise money. And we also want to do as much as we can to support the design community, so maybe this will lead to a new circular fundraising model that benefits everyone,” says Yiu. “It’s just an idea, but let’s see where it goes. In the history of mankind, crisis and catastrophe have often led to innovation.”
See also: 10 Unexpectedly Revitalised Historic Sites in Hong Kong: Now and Then