Innehållsförteckning för Issue 7 från Design Anthology, Asia Pacific Edition

Since founding Design Anthology I’ve found myself in the privileged position of travelling more frequently, often to stunning locations. Most of this is for the magazine, and hence sounds far more glamorous than it is in reality. Occasionally, I find myself in hotels questioning whether they’ve entirely forgotten that their business is hospitality and not just renting out a bed, while others I’ve had the privilege to visit are doing a brilliant job, stepping up to the increasingly intense competition they face in a variety of ways. For this issue, regular contributor Catherine Shaw visited the latest addition to Swire Properties’ ‘House Collection’ — the Temple House in Chengdu. She reports back on page 70 on how sensitive restoration and architectural preservation come together to make a unique and authentic…

Taiwan is a country of two minds. There is the political entity — the Republic of China — and the social entity —Taiwan — and it’s the tension that exists between these two that makes it such an unendingly fascinating place to visit. The endearingly sweet potato-shaped island was first ‘discovered’ by Portuguese explorers who, entranced by its wealth and diversity of natural beauty, named it ilha formosa, meaning ‘beautiful island’. At the time, a potpourri of indigenous tribes (who purportedly bear ancestral linkages to the Polynesian and New Zealand Maori people), Fujianese and Hakka groups populated the island, and, along with successive colonisations over the years including an extended occupation by the Japanese, have imbued it with the rich cultural variety for which it is still known today. In…

‘Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow.’ Edward Said — Orientalism The contemporary art scene in Asia seems to be on the cusp of burgeoning. From prominent architectural undertakings to intensifying public programming,and from international investment to a strengthening grassroots art contingent, Asia’s present-day art scene is undergoing unprecedented changes in both scope and orientation. The third iteration of Art Basel Hong Kong, with a roster of 231 galleries from 37 nations just passed this spring, as did the sixth Beijing International Art Biennale this September-October and its participating artists from no less than 84…

Charbon, Hong Kong The latest addition to Hong Kong’s rapidly expanding Southside cultural scene is Charbon. Launched earlier this year to coincide with the new annual South Island Art Day, Charbon is a multipurpose art and cultural venue. The 170-square-metre former industrial space, curated by French photographer and art collector Lalie Choffel, features a gallery, library, screening room, shop (named Cabinet of Curiosities) and performance space. Keep an eye out for future art and design movie screenings, performances, talks and book launches. charbonartspace.com Ivano Redaelli, Taipei Low-key luxury is the name of the game with Italian lifestyle brand Ivano Redaelli. Known historically for bedding and linens, the company has since expanded to provide a full repertoire of furniture and accessories, all of which are now available in its first mono-brand…

On a recent trip to Taiwan, Design Anthology sat down with Kelly Lin, one of the young designers that make up Taipei-based Kimu, to find out more about how they work and how they came to join forces to become one of the city’s most talented up-and-coming design studios. Design Anthology: When did you first realise you wanted to be a designer? Kelly Lin: I think it was when I was in college. Our designer Ketty knew much younger — her high school majored in art, but not mine. Alex Yeh and I studied at Cheng Kung University. What did you study? Industrial design. But in my second year I considered giving it up because I was interested in psychology and biology. And at that time I was quite confused…

Deco Collect 251 Nanjing West Road, Datong District A three-floor emporium of all things beautiful is what proprietor Sophia Su has created with Deco Collect. The lower two levels offer a beautifully curated selection of furniture, objets, art, books and other accessories, all with a slightly rustic Asian vibe (think Axel Vervoordt), while the upper level is a cafe. This spot also happens to be the ideal start of a walk down historic Dinhua Street, known locally as Herb Street, with its heritage low-rise buildings. Delicate Antiques 346 Jiaxing Street, Da’an District / facebook.com/AntiqueDelicate This is one of the tiniest antique stores we’ve ever seen. Owner Jin has an incredible eye for collecting objects with age and patina, and the way each of the pieces is displayed in the…

CITY Ideally located in the heart of Singapore, The South Beach luxury hotel offers 654 spacious guest rooms including 49 suites and two sky gardens. The H.I.P. (Highly Individualised People and Places) hotel promises guests a unique experience through its integration of lifestyle, design and technology. With architecture by Foster + Partners and global design firm Aedas, interiors by Philippe Starck and installations by artists Lee Lee Nam and Soh Ee Shaun, this new hotspot is a sensory delight for the design-oriented traveller. The latest on the suprisingly short roster of luxury hotel properties in Milan is the Mandarin Oriental. Situated in the heart of the city’s shopping and cultural districts, just minutes’ walk from the Duomo and via Monte Napoleone, the hotel is housed within what was a private…

When Singapore was unexpectedly ousted from the Malaysian Federation just two years after its formation, leader Lee Kuan Yew sobbed on national television in a moment that would be forever inscribed into the memory of his countrymen.The sudden uncertainty of the immediate future was a formidable barrier in bringing stability to a region still rocked by the Japanese occupation and longing for a return to normalcy. Rejected by Malaysia and beset by escalating racial tensions between the core Chinese, Malay and Tamil populations, the urgent task at hand was to map out a collective vision for an independent Singaporean state. But what customs, values and social mores would come to unite the world’s newest country and to forge an identity beyond that of the jilted lover of Malaysia? In the…

The former farmlands of Hong Kong’s Ho Man Tin district are named after the Ho and Man families who originally settled the area. Its eastern hills became a resettlement area in the 1950s and 60s, shifting Ho Man Tin’s boundaries to the east where they remain today. Since the closure of nearby Kai Tak Airport in 1998, there has been an increasing number of luxury residences capitalising on the area’s urban neighbourhood ambience and proximity to Hong Kong’s major hubs. The area is home to King George V School, one of the city’s oldest English-language schools, and the intended 2016 opening of a local train station further boosts its appeal. Hong Kong-based Antony Chan of Cream design studio was asked to design a home for a family of three on…

Levittown is the name assigned to four nearly-identical, mass-produced residential suburbs constructed during the postwar building boom in the United States, and it’s from here that the phrase ‘cookie cutter houses’ first entered our lexicon. The towns’ developers and namesakes Levitt & Sons designed six standard models of single-family dwellings complete with lawns, and developed an assembly-line construction method that made it possible to complete each house in a quarter of an hour — not much longer than it takes to bake a cookie. Unfortunately, the homes turned out to be as homogenous as their exclusively white owners, a perennial problem with which architects and planners continue to struggle: how to design healthy communities that also foster a diversity of individual expression? Last April, Netherlands-based UNStudio proposed a sophisticated solution…

As in much of urban Asia, South Korea’s relative shortage of land and high population density have fostered a relentless focus on the conception and use of space, with at times mixed results — as a glance at the country’s concrete-choked cityscapes will attest. But these limitations have also given rise to some astonishing displays of creativity. The case of the Secret Garden, a rooftop development in the otherwise largely nondescript Uijeongbu district on the outskirts of Seoul, is one such example. Created by Alan Maskin of Olson Kundig Architects in collaboration with sculpture and installation artist Do-Ho Suh and local department store operator Shinsegae, the project occupies the 2000-square-metre ninth-storey terrace of a shopping complex. Blending cultural and retail space, it offers an outlet for children and families to…

44 South Village 50 Songqing Street, Xinyi District Built in the 1940s to house former soldiers of the Kuomintang after the Second World War, this was the first military residential compound in Taiwan. Many of these villages have since been demolished, but thankfully one at least has been saved from the wrecking ball. Onsite is restaurant/art space Good Cho’s — which offers a different selection of bagels daily — a market and a museum about the history of the settlement. Huashan 1914 Creative Park 1 Bade Road Section 1, Zhongzheng District / huashan1914.com/en Huashan consists of a series of structures built in 1914 to house one of the country’s largest wine producers. Abandoned for decades, the compound was rediscovered in 1997 by a group of young thespians, who reclaimed…

Can an ultra-contemporary minimalist home be cosy? Brazilian starchitect Marcio Kogan thinks so. ‘We used to make all-white, aseptic and futuristic houses, and then about twenty years ago a client hired us on condition that we didn’t do a white house,’ he says. ‘At that moment, we brought natural materials to our projects for the first time. The result ended up pleasing me a lot and made our contemporary architecture extremely cosy and human.’ Since then, Kogan and his São Paulo-based studio mk27 have made a name for themselves for their distinctive organic design. Previous projects include the raw concrete Casa Cubo (‘Cube House’) home and a 65-metre-long house in the Brazilian countryside that is opaque at one end and transparent at the other. Their latest design is a collection…

‘It feels like you’re in a treehouse,’ says interior designer Brendan Wong of the master bedroom of the Victorian-era home he designed in Sydney. ‘It’s on a more intimate scale to the rest of the house and the layering of natural materials creates a sense of retreat.’ With simple walnut side tables, an ochre leather headboard above the bed and subtle linen drapery opening up to lush views, it’s no surprise this is Wong’s favourite room. Creating a feeling of cosiness in the imposing 1890s residence wasn’t easy. ‘When empty, the scale and grandeur of the home is actually quite overwhelming,’ he says. The two-storey property once served as a private hospital and later a 22-room boarding house with separate entrances. Wong was set the task of maintaining the grandeur…

Raymond Fung is perhaps too modest. ‘I may not be a very good designer but I worked very hard,’ he says. Yet Fung is responsible for many of Hong Kong’s best public spaces: parks, gardens and municipal facilities that buck a decades-long trend of mediocre government architecture. If his name sounds unfamiliar, don’t worry — the government’s Architectural Services Department enforces a culture of anonymity. But Fung didn’t join the civil service for glory. ‘People thought I just wanted to be lazy, to work nine-to-five. But I joined the government because I wanted to work on civic architecture.’ It’s late in the afternoon and Fung is making tea inside his Wan Chai studio, which is mostly empty except for a ping pong table covered by a tablecloth. Fung is 63…

When you live in a city of 24 million people in a state of constant hustle and bustle, every encounter can feel a bit like sensory overload. The intense blare of Korean pop music greets me as I emerge from the bowels of Nanjing West Road metro station along with hundreds of other sweaty commuters.My eyes squint against the glare of neon lights from the shops to my left. A bevy of fashionable teenagers saunter out of a nearby Nike store as they tap away on their mobile phones, their youthful faces lit by the warm glow of technology. Less than a decade ago, this area was home to street food stalls where the pungent smells of fried dumplings and stinky tofu were accompanied by retirees line dancing. Now, modern…