Design demystified in M+ collection Hong Kong show
A lot of people don’t really know what design is, says curator of first show of design items from future Hong Kong museum
“Is it possible to let a sketch become an object, and to design it directly into space?” asks Swedish design group Front. Apparently, it is.
“[Front] went to a 3D-motion-capture studio and, using an electronic pen, they hand sketched furniture in mid-air. The data was then transferred to a 3D printer. And voila!” says Aric Chen.
Chen is lead curator for design and architecture at M+, which has inaugurated its first design exhibition, “Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection”, featuring 120 of the 2,500 works of design and architecture it has collected in the past four years. The exhibits date from 1937 to now, and include the Stockholm-based designers’ “Materialised Sketch of a Chandelier”.
An historical showcase presenting several contextual vignettes – such as a post-independence India room, or one showing Hong Kong’s manufacturing history – the exhibition also aims to present experimental works, including for example a series of first-edition emojis.
“A lot of people don’t really know what design is,” says Chen. Given it is continuously evolving, he says, it is perhaps not surprising that even those in the industry have trouble defining it.
