Shedding light on German design through the ages

"When I was a student, I only saw these things in pictures," says Leslie Lu as he walks past a collection of Tizio desk lamps, designed in 1970 by Richard Sapper. Thirty-five years ago, Lu was studying architecture at Yale University and the idea of owning an object designed by someone like Sapper, one of Germany's most renowned industrial designers, was wishful thinking for a penny-pinching student.

Besides, if Lu were able to afford a designer lamp, he might have chosen something more outlandish. "Germans did not start with style first - the Italians and the French did the opposite," he says. "In the old days we used to laugh at the Germans for being so simple-minded."

How things change. Lu is now vice-principal of the Hong Kong Institute of Design (HKDI) and he is behind the creation of Hong Kong's first major exhibition of German industrial design. Functional, reliable and authoritatively simple - these are the hallmarks of the German design tradition. "They understand the spirit of the times, which is marrying manufacturing and craft," says Lu. "German design is about taking everyday things to new heights. And it has to last."

German Design Standards: From Bauhaus to Globalisation gathers more than 150 objects in the main gallery of the HKDI's Tiu Keng Leng campus, from early home computers to the steel frame of a Smart car. The exhibits, drawn from the Red Dot Design Museum in Essen and Die Neue Sammlung, one of the world's leading design museums, in Munich, span the history of modern Germany, from the Industrial Revolution to post-war partition and the rise of global capitalism, which has seen German design gain more influence than ever before.

"We tried to do a selection that could tell a story of German design, from the start of industrialisation in the 19th century, the changing of society and everything else - that's the starting point," says Corinna Rösner, chief curator of Die Neue Sammlung, which has the world's largest collection of industrial and product design. "We always try to find objects that say important things about life today."

For that reason, the exhibition is not strictly chronological, starting instead with a few contemporary objects that highlight the essence of German design philosophy, which is "the balance between design and engineering", according to Red Dot director Peter Zec.