Multi Disciplinary Symposium

Prada Frames draws attention to the intrinsically interconnected nature of design and its surrounding

- JOHN NG

The mission of Prada Frames is simple: use innovative ways of thinking to bring attention to initiatives dedicated to our environment and its sustainability. Part One of the 2023 edition of the symposium — organised by Formafantasma, a Milan and Rotterdam-based design and research firm — focussed on the intricate relationship between design and its surroundings at M+ in Hong Kong. The two-day event, curated by Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture, kicked off with a talk by architect Jacques Herzog followed by discussions on the topic of “Material in Flux”, presented by local and international scholars and professionals, including Ute Meta Bauer, LAAB Architects, Charles Lim, Marisa Yiu and Formafantasma.

Jacques Herzog discussed how a museum’s physical layout might help foster long-term social innovation and core creativity — like the award-winning proposal by him and Pierre de Meuron, his co-founder and senior partner of Herzog & de Meuron to transform the Marktplatz in Basel — in his lecture. Herzog explained that there was a strong dislike of postmodernism and deconstructive approaches at the beginning of the 1970s.

There was an urgent desire to find a different vision of what architecture’s potential could be to find a way in. One of their answers is the Ricola Herb Centre in Switzerland, whose facades are mostly made of the earth that was already there. The same method can also be seen in a variety of their designs, such as Tate Modern, the 2011 Serpentine Pavilion and M+. Herzog went on to share that the inspiration behind M+ derived from the geometric shapes and concrete walls for the MRT Airport Express railway tunnels directly underneath.