Art, Culture & Lifestyle - Italian Cultural Institute Hong Kong & Macau

Stefano Fossati Director

Italian Cultural Institute Hong Kong & Macau

Design Made in Hong Kong 2022 edition

“The post-contemporary Object”

Design Made in Hong Kong is a project launched in 2019. It is the evolution of a project I curated during my mandate as the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Osaka. The main inspiration and goal of the project is the creation of a working dialogue between Hong Kong and Italy in the field of Design.

Hong Kong and Italy have a long history of cultural and business exchanges where Design plays a strategic role. For this reason, it was relatively easy to create a vast network of enthusiastic collaborators and partners, including academics, professionals, companies, and students. The participation of many qualified students was a distinctive highlight of the project.

In 2020, teams from three Universities from Hong Kong, in close contact with Italian designers, worked on subjects crucial for the future of Design: objects and materials that matter; the definition of furniture to enhance communication internally and externally; new concepts of quality living in the tiny home environment.

The exhibition “Milan - Hong Kong Design: New Forms and Functions in Parallel with Italian Iconic Works”, held at the Hong Kong Arts Centre (March 26 to April 4, 2021), showcased prototypes and projects made by the universities, and the creations of the three Italian designers (Federico Peri, Sara Ricciardi and Federica Biasi) who had worked with the teams. The third sector of the exhibition, called “Italian Design Masters”, was intended to guide the visitors through works that made the history of Design in the world. Aldo Cibic, Alessandro Mendini, Ettore Sottsass and Gaetano Pesce, were some of the creators of the “Italian iconic works” on display.

This third sector was generously curated by Mr William Figliola, founder of the Novalis Art Design Gallery in Hong Kong. Despite all the difficulties we had to face in the last two years, the projects and prototypes from the Hong Kong universities could travel to Milan during the Milano Design Week in September 2021, thanks to the 5Vie Association.

It was the third part of the exhibition, dominated by the revolutionary style of Memphis design and the intuition of William Figliola, that inspired the present edition of Design Made in Hong Kong 2022.

The new edition of the project keeps the same pattern and spirit of the previous one: creating a solid and practical connection between Italian and Hong Kong creativity in the field of Design at various levels (professional, educational, and industrial) with great attention to the young generation.

The main partners of the 2022 edition are the Hong Kong Design Institute and Novalis Art Design Gallery.

The Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI) is a leading design institution providing high-quality education and nurturing emerging talents who underpin the creative industries in Hong Kong.

HKDI’s design departments (Architecture, Interior and Product Design, Communication Design, Digital Media and Fashion and Image Design) offer students a threeyear university degree pathway from a Higher Diploma to one-year Bachelor degrees offered by reputable universities in the UK.

The “think-and-do” of HKDI gives students opportunities to acquire hands-on experience and participate in global exchange programmes in collaboration with local and international academic and industry partners.

Installation view of the Italian Design Masters section of ‘Milan - Hong Kong Design: New Forms and Functions in Parallel with Italian Iconic Works’ exhibition, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre

Installation view of the Italian Design Masters section of ‘Milan - Hong Kong Design: New Forms and Functions in Parallel with Italian Iconic Works’ exhibition, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre

Founded in 2012 by William Figliola, Novalis Art Design is one of the most innovative and creative galleries in Hong Kong. Its exhibitions showcase a constant dialogue between Art and Design, mainly focusing on the Memphis Group design movement - the famous Italian design movement founded by Ettore Sottsass in 1981.

The artistic approach to furniture design introduced by Memphis in the 80s that was then adopted by a large part of the world is still influential in the contemporary visual scenario, awakened by native digital aesthetic languages characterized by bright colours and deconstructed geometries, according to an “insta-friendly” approach designed to look good on one’s small screen smartphone (and to encourage e-commerce).

The great opportunity that presents itself in Memphis today is combining the firepower of the visual languages typical of social networks (Instagram in the first place) with the cultural density of a brand that has made the history of post-modern Design.

“With this in mind, each student will design a lamp that declines the aesthetic identity of Memphis in a way that is consistent with the brand and, at the same time, in line with the new aesthetic sensibilities native to digital networks, thus bringing the freshness of the new contemporary visual scenarios into the real product, defining a new contemporality in which the physical product speaks the language of the digital image, turning it into a “solid”, physically present element,” says William Figliola, curator of the project.

The project created by the team will be on display, together with a retrospective of the Memphis production, at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre as a part of the Italian Pavilion at the [25 years of Design] exhibition (May 12 to May 15, 2022).

Italian Design Masters section of ‘Milan - Hong Kong Design: New Forms and Functions in Parallel with Italian Iconic Works’ exhibition, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre, from left to right: Nilo by Ettore Sottsass, Colorado by Marco Zanini, Tigris by Ettore Sottsass

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