Imminent Domain: Designing the Life of Tomorrow

In 2013, Asia Society Hong Kong Center organized “Imminent Domain: Designing the Life of Tomorrow”, its first design exhibition featuring 12 local designers. Works from across industries including jewelry, automobile, fashion, product, and interior design among others, were displayed to provoke ideas on lifestyle. Traveling to National Design Centre Singapore, the smaller-scale exhibition continues this goal with a focus on the changing concepts about future living. We are now in an era of unprecedented developments in science and technology.

The end result of it is the constant paradigm shift in our life, if not also our world view. Good designers must learn to absorb the influence of this changing world and move forward by evaluating “life” from every possible angle. Ultimately, design is not just about how we will, but also how we should live in the future. This is the principle underlying the project. Exploring the (dis)continuation between the current and future ways of living, works by 3 selected designers from the 12 – Nicolas Cheng, Yeung Chin and Dylan Kwok – are featured. They challenge the current status quo and suggest an alternative mode that will change the presumptions about lifestyle. Nicolas Cheng spent over 6 months in China to acquire the traditional skills and techniques to produce a set of cloisonné vessels. The end product stages a stark contrast between the traditional craft of cloisonné and the industrial feel that reminds us of mass production today. Yeung Chin designed a collection of inflatable garment that questions the skinniness-equals-beauty formula by providing a unique body shape to each wearer. Dylan Kwok’s “interior” design houses are not displayed inside the exhibition center, but outside of it, in order to challenge our concepts about boundary. Specially made postcards inspired by the Chinese earth gods have also been sent throughout the months before the show, allowing us to re-examine the limit between Hong Kong and Singapore.

The goal of this exhibition is to showcase how Hong Kong’s creative potentials can interact with its twin-city Singapore, with a focus on the clash between lives in the past, the now, and the future in the fields of product, fashion, and socio-urban designs. Traveling beyond its original roots sparks new questions and challenges. This extension of the Hong Kong exhibition is equally powerful in electrifying the audience in Singapore, and leading an imminent revolution of designs – designs that will upgrade us to a freer and more artistic domain. Ultimately, it is hoped that people can regard Hong Kong’s extraordinary creative potentials in a whole new light. Imminent Domain at National Design Centre Singapore is organized by Asia Society Hong Kong Center.