Hong Kong’s largest design festival deTour 2022 returns to PMQ from 25 November to 4 December, with a focus on one international collaboration, four featured exhibitions and fourteen selected entries from up-and-coming local and overseas designers.

Under the theme Design as One, the curatorial team took an unorthodox and rallying collaborative route, inviting the public to contribute to the creative process with ideas, thoughts and data to be collected and interpreted by designers.

We had the chance to meet with curators Chi-wing Lee, Kay Chan Wan Ki, Soilworm Lai and Mic Leong (STICKYLINE), who shared their curatorial approach and their belief to transform the 2022 edition into a channel of communication and interaction.

deTour 2022 Curators: Soilworm Lai (STICKYLINE), Chi-wing Lee, Kay Chan Wan Ki, and Mic Leong (STICKYLINE)

The idea behind deTour 2022‘s theme Design as One was to “erase the barriers and bring design closer to you, me and everyone” by seeking public’s participation to the design process with “ideas, opinions and actions”, and then by turning the public’s “feedback and responses into data to drive design forward”, explained the curators.

Designers would act as “storytellers, connecting different communities, recording and interpreting the vast information gathered”. Data from the event will not only serve to inspire designers on spot, but will also “contribute to an ocean of open data with lasting impact on creativity and design, far in the future”.

About Time by Domestic Data Streamers

This year, to co-present the International Collaboration, the curatorial team was able to meet with globally-renowned Spanish creative studio Domestic Data Streamers, who examines, in About Time, how time can be organised to build memories.

Bring Romie 18 to the East by Adelaide Lala Tam

In Bring Romie 18 to the East, one of the four Featured Exhibitions, food story designer Adelaide Lala Tam, based in the Netherlands, extensively documents the life of a cow to respectively understand and infiltrate the cattle industry system.

In the fourteen Selected Entries, many overseas designers participated. In Peaky Blinds, Mia Frykholm from Denmark and Sweden discusses the gap between private and public spaces.

Peaky Blinds by Mia Frykholm

Digital medium, innovation and data are at the heart of the 2022 edition, and it may raise the question whether there is still room for more traditional design and designers, and how innovation and tradition can coexist together.

For the curators, the advancement of technologies and media only comprehend the expression of traditional design and designers.”Digital media, traditional crafts and culture are not mutually exclusive. Design plays a role of balancing and blending in, bringing out the beauty of both”, they said.

After Seventeen Days by Anthony Ko and @streetsignhk

For instance, in After Seventeen Days, one of the Selected Entries, architect Anthony Ko proposes a signboard evaluation system similar to the evaluation of historic buildings, to determine which signboards should stay or go based on a set of criteria.

Until 31 December, you can also enjoy the nineteen participatory exhibitions through deTour virtual festival. Online visitors can contribute to data collection and design by joining virtual tour and participating in research conducted at each exhibition.

To know more about the festival, all details can be found here: deTour 2022