HONG KONG.- Design Trust, an initiative of the registered charity Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design serving as a grant-funding platform, is thrilled to announce that Marisa Yiu, leading architect and co-founder of ESKYIU, has been appointed Executive Director of Design Trust. Her appointment will take the organisation into an exciting new phase, building on its current success and developing new programmes, audiences and institutional partnerships.
Yiu will be responsible for spearheading the creation of long-term, intelligent and meaningful platforms to fund innovative and thought-provoking investigations in various design disciplines, from graphics, media, wearable technologies, architecture to the environment, focused on Hong Kong and the Greater Pearl River Delta Region (GPRD). In her new capacity, Yiu expresses “I am excited to be taking on a leadership role for Design Trust, an organisation that I have been involved with for so long. I am committed to expanding our reach to new audiences, and look forward to advancing our mission of cultivating and communicating in-depth understanding of the design ecology in this region. It is through the funding of meaningful projects that we hope to stimulate richer dialogues, foster a culture of experimentation and generate new ideas.”
Design Trust now offers the following grants for projects relevant to the GPRD:
• Research Fellowships – Annual
In partnership with world-renowned institutions, Design Trust offers fellowships that allow individuals to develop their emerging careers, build in-depth research, and create innovative work. The current fellowship is in partnership with M+, Hong Kong’s new museum for visual culture.
• Feature Grants – Annual, up to HK$300,000 funding
Support exchanges between a Hong Kong/China based collective with an international cultural institution. Projects have a wide-reaching audience and may be sited in a globally recognised exhibition or biennale.
• Seed Grants – Quarterly, HK$50,000 funding
Foster a culture of experimentation, testing and sharing. This grant is awarded to individuals seeking to kick-start a meaningful and intellectual project with social, educational, economical or environmental impact for communities.
Design Trust is concurrently delighted to announce that Pelin Tan has been awarded a Design Trust Seed Grant for her project Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone. The proposal aims to research the culture of oceanic infrastructure of the GPRD maritime domain, investigating the layered social, political and environmental systems it encompasses. Tan’s research focuses on GPRD from the perspective of floating settlements, fisherman networks, and islands that function as border infrastructures, as well as the effect of maritime vessel traffic and designed structures on the sea territory.
Additionally, the 2016 M+/Design Trust Research Fellowship continues its impact on the research culture in advancing knowledge. Joseph Grima, the internationally renowned Genoa-based architect, writer and researcher, who has co-curated the inaugural Istanbul Design Biennial in 2012 and was recently the Co-Artistic Director of the 2015 Chicago Architecture Biennial, will build on his respected work in the area of open-source, collaborative, and non-hierarchical design by examing the contemporary design ecosystems of Shenzhen and the GPRD. Concurrently, the team of Daniel Cooper and Juliana Kei will undertake a three month fellowship starting July 2016 at M+. Entitled 76 Countries and One Adminstrative Zone; Hong Kong in World Expos, their research will look at Hong Kong’s representation on the international stage, focusing on the 1964 New York World’s Fair and Expo ’70 in Osaka, and how those events helped construct and reinforce an image of the territory via complicated interaction of objects, building technologies, identity and colonial expectations.
The appointment of Marisa Yiu, and announcement of the new Seed and Fellowship Grants are testament to the organisation’s active engagement, impact and acceleration of design in the region. Design Trust continues to fulfill its mandate as a proponent for the positive role of design in society.
