Creative City with Zurich University of Arts

Sep 2016

 

As one of HKDI’s international partners, the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) is developing the International Design Workshop at the Connecting Space Hong Kong. This team, led by Professor Michael Krohn with his associate Ms Karin Zindel, developed the workshop as part of their Masters Course of Arts in Design, across different cultures. Within this there are many references to Hong Kong Culture and for the 2016 workshop, the topic was “Creative City”.

 

Hong Kong is a city of great food but also a city prone to waste. Over 3,200 tonnes of food waste is produced each day. Can designers become critical agents to prototype alternative solutions with citizens and question inappropriate social changes? In Sept 2016, the HKDI DESIS Lab team was invited to lead one group of MA students from ZHdK. 20 Masters students were working between ZHdK’s Connecting Space in North Point and the HKDI DESIS Lab. In a five-day design experiment, we hung around the Western Wholesale Food Market, one of the core sources of food waste in the city. Through the action research methodology and design interventions method, we prototyped new ideas to disturb the existing ecosystem of the wholesaling businesses: over 500 stalls supplying vegetables, fruits, eggs and fishes to the whole of Hong Kong Island for 1.3 million citizens. As a result, a special community event to share the results was organised, bringing together participants and community members in the market. An installation to share the investigation was later recreated at the Connecting Space.