FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING
Hong Kong and Shenzhen
New technology is upending traditional manufacturing by making small batch production profitable. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of hardware.
A four day immersion across two cities and co-hosted by Gold Peak Technology Group Ltd. Chairman Victor Lo and the former IIT Institute of Design Dean Patrick Whitney, our Hong Kong and Shenzhen immersion addressed how local culture informs industry and asked the cohort to consider how design can harness such industry disruptions into opportunities.
A physical hub for design creativity
Home to over 100 local entrepreneurs, PMQ is a multi-use incubator and community gathering space housed within an innovative adaptive reuse architectural project.
Once a dormitory for Hong Kong’s married police force members, the city funded the revitalization of the building in 2009, which was led by Hong Kong Design Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and the Hong Kong Design Institute of the Vocational Training Council to make the space a hub of creative industry.
Our visit to PMQ contextualized China’s design education history and future by highlighting the work of Bay McLaughlin at Brinc, Johan Persson at C'Monde Studios, and Otto Ng at LAAB Architects.
Re-thinking China’s design eduction
We extended our exploration of China’s design education at Steelcase. At the time of our visit, it was clear that Chinese design education was moving away from design as a skill-based trade to a new way of thinking.
Paired with China’s access to inexpensive resources and labor, the increased ability to develop creative concepts suggests that the region could leapfrog its competition in the United States and Europe.
“The big opportunity and challenge lies in not simply approaching Shenzhen through a Western design language or seeing it as following behind Western hubs, but to take seriously its culture and history of production in its own right.”
— Silvia Lindtner, University of Michigan Professor + Hacked Matter Co-Founder
Re-positioning hacking
Housed in Shenzhen, the hardware capital of the world, Seeed Studio sees open source knowledge as the key to the future of an ever-growing, ever-evolving manufacturing industry.
“We help shape the mindset from consumerism to maker-ism, breed an environment for makers to share ideas, and transform concepts into concrete products.”
- Eric Pan, Seeed Studio Founder
Seeed Studio welcomed our cohort into their headquarters to discuss their pioneering technology that combines multiple tools into single platforms. They served as an example of how co-location of hardware, factory space, labor, and design, allow for new products to be realized almost as quickly as they are conceived.
Our partners at Hacked Matter also shed light on the power of building unified platforms from disparate tools and ideas through their focus on new technology production, shanzhai manufacturing networks, and China’s maker culture.
Here, hacking, once viewed as an outlaw activity, has been repositioned by Western design principles like rapid prototyping into something new.
“There’s an element of criminality about shanzai, in the way that Robin Hood is a bit of an outlaw, but it’s really about autonomy, independence, and very progressive survival techniques.”
- Silvia Lindtner, University of Michigan Professor
+ Hacked Matter Co-Founder
Enabled by robotics and 3D printing, our manufacturing industries can now sustainably create small, unique batches, and are no longer bound by the mass-manufacturing of consumer packaged goods productions.
In this new context, what are the greatest manufacturing opportunities? And how do our major industries utilize them?
As we found in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, such industry redefining contexts require refreshed educational curriculum, collaborative and open-source thinking, and flexibility as inevitable industry changes arrive.
CREDITS
VICTOR LO
Gold Peak Industries
BoDW
Hong Kong Design Centre
VICTOR TSANG & WILLIAM TO
PMQ
ERIC PAN
Seeed Studio
JOHAN PERSSON
C’Monde
RICHARD HATTER
Hotel ICON
BAY MCLAUGHLIN
Brinc LAAB
OTTO NG
Steelcase
ANJALI KELKAR
LAAB Architects
FREN HAN
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
TECHTRONIC INDUSTRIES
SCIENCE PARK
SHENZHEN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN ASSOCIATION
SILVIA LINDTNER & DAVID LI
Hacked Matter
CHAIHUO MAKERSPACE
DIAMOND CAB