LAUNCH OF DESIGNAGE HK CLUB (DAHK) 

 

HKDI DESIS Lab for Social Design Research Lab would like to thank the “Retiree & Senior Fair” Asia 2014 held at HKCEC in July for providing the space to launch our DesignAge HK Club, an association opens to local citizens, especially elders. The English historian Peter Laslett1, stated that ageing is “a unique experience for each individual… [to] live in the presence of all your future selves.” His words were used to promote a life-course approach to addressing ageing issues. Later, this concept was extended by the DesignAge Programme at the Royal College of Art, the first design movement in the realm of ageing which centred around the concept of “Design for Our Future Selves”. Additionally, we aim to show a “designerly” way to dealing with Hong Kong’s ageing population, a solution-focused approach that will be explained in further detail  in the keyword section of this issue. 

 

By creating different design activities that allow older people to participate in the practice of design, we intend to stimulate and revitalize their imaginative and observatory capacities in their everyday life, as well as to release their potential ingenuity. With that in mind, we curated and conducted three design activities in the course of our 3-day launch event, the first two being “Bagging you! Design your bag” and “Foot-step: Design your Meal”, both of which allowed participants to design bags and dining rituals of their preference and experience the pleasure of designing and sharing their life tactics with the us. Many of them also tried to design their “Memorial diamonds” – diamonds produced from cremated remains in the “Open Diamonds Project: Design our dying Diamond” corner. 

 

1Laslett (1996)  ‘A Fresh Map of Life: Emergence of the Third Age’, Palgrave Macmillan, p.ix