Design Anthology, Asia Edition #23

I’m writing this from one of my favourite cities in the world: Copenhagen. A city that hardly needs an introduction and requires little effort to love, it’s a place I’ve returned to several times for several reasons. And while it’s endlessly appealing for foodies and design lovers alike, it’s also welcoming to those of us who identify as digital nomads: good coffee and Wi-Fi are easily found. The phenomenon of being so digitally nomadic seems recent — at least, the term is — but there are certain individuals from an earlier era (think W Somerset Maugham and Rudyard Kipling, both of whom have suites at several iconic establishments named after them) who made their way across the globe with such apparent ease that we forget how much slower and more expensive…

OBJECTIVE, Hong Kong Recently launched e-store OBJECTIVE is the sister company of young but already award-winning design practice STUDIO ADJECTIVE. Eight years ago, Hong Kong-based founders Emily Ho and Wilson Lee had the idea to create a ‘worry-free’ shopping destination for their residential design clients. Customers can select from OBJECTIVE, a range of products that can be easily incorporated into their homes and daily lives, as well as new brands the two discover on their travels, including Ho’s favourite ceramic brand Ghost Wares. Alongside the gentle ceramic pieces from this Melbourne studio, OBJECTIVE offers an extensive selection from Scandi skincare brand Tangent GC as well as smaller furniture items by Ishinomaki Laboratory, including the STUDIO ADJECTIVE-designed Tripodal stool. obj.com.hk…

Frank Chou One of the most exciting young designers working in China today, Chou launched a series of new pieces under the name Combo at Design China Beijing earlier this year. The Combo armchair (seen here), perhaps the most representative piece, was inspired by the history of handmade upholstery and reinvents a ‘classic’ in a modern design language through an interesting modular combination. The variety of colours and forms creates a chair that is uniquely dynamic. frankchou.com RIL CREED × OPENUU Hong Kong- and Tokyo-based ethical leather goods company RIL CREED first became acquainted with Hong Kong design studio OPENUU when it commissioned the young duo to design the brand’s first flagship store in Hong Kong. After a successful collaboration the two decided to work together again, this time on a collection of…

Designing Japan: A Future Built on Aesthetics by Kenya Hara (Lars Müller) Designing Japan is the result of two years’ worth of columns written by Kenya Hara for Tosho magazine, originally under the rubric ‘The Education of Desire’, which the legendary designer sees less as consumption-focused marketing and more as cultivating human desire through interaction with refined design in all areas of life. According to Hara, this concept is more valid than ever given Japan’s unprecedented social and economic circumstances, i.e. a dialectic of nativism versus Westernisation originating from the Meiji Restoration. He argues for a future driven by the intentionality of design and informed by the aesthetic sensibility that underpins Japan’s approach to work and industry but firmly focused on the future. Spread over six categories, topics range from design platforms and…

What might possess someone to incinerate their carefully crafted timber work? It’s a question that Makiko Ryujin, the rogue craftswoman becoming known for her prowess with a blowtorch, is uniquely placed to answer. Born and raised in Japan, Ryujin spent a year in Indonesia before moving to Melbourne to complete high school. On finishing a photography degree at RMIT University, she sought a more hands-on pursuit, which led to a woodwork course at the Victorian Woodworkers Association in 2016. There, she discovered a fascination for woodturning, mesmerised by its immediacy. ‘I couldn’t believe how quickly it could happen,’ she recalls. ‘You take a rough block and suddenly, you have something you can use. It was like a magic trick.’ Even if woodturning itself provides almost instant gratification, the full undertaking of transforming…

In the popular imagination, Thailand is a spectral land where ghosts coexist with the living. This holds true architecturally as well as spiritually: the country’s urban and periurban areas are peppered with structures that are neither fully present nor entirely absent, haunted by the past and unable to reconcile with the future. The most famous of these abandoned buildings, Bangkok’s Ghost Tower — a half-built skyscraper thwarted by the 1997 Asian financial crisis — has never truly lived. However, the very opposite is true of the palatial Art Deco and severe mid-century structures that fill the pages of Thailand’s Movie Theatres: Relics, Ruins and the Romance of Escape. ‘In the days before most houses had electricity, the local movie theatre was where everybody came together, irrespective of class or occupation,’ writes…