3 days of international speakers , local designers, architects and Italian masters at the BODW 2007 in Hong Kong, a forum titled “Asia’s leading event on innovation, design and brand”.
So much knowledge has been shared during these three days, but the most important is the feeling of friendship and collaboration that an event like this brings to the Hong Kong and China design scene.
The first day’s highlight was the presentation by Marc Newson. He started reviewing his work, paying attention to aviation related projects like the space-plane for Astrium [ video ]. As he doesn’t like to talk about design topics, he decided to talk about himself, fare enough considering the self-centered-design process he applies in his projects. Marc Newson likes to design products as a whole, taking care of all decisions and designing all the accessories that will surround the designed product. He said that “as a designer, you should design all that comes with the product, you must control all the story. Because if others do it, they can ruin your design.”. He thinks that the projects where many people are involved taking decisions, lead to mediocre results. That’s why his products have that strong personality and consistency.
The second day of the BODW started with Tom Dixon who defined his furniture as “modern britishness”. He asked the design community not to re-design things that are over-designed, he suggested designers should work on products where design isn’t used wisely, like the sex toys industry.
He also reminded us that the biggest threat of a designer is: “talking too much and doing too few” regarding the recent exponential increase of design events and conferences all over the world.
The inspiring highlight of the day was the presentation of SizeChina project, an anthropometric digital database of the Chinese heads and faces. Very useful stuff if you want to design helmets and glassware for china market ;), because Asian skulls are rounder than the western ones, (some Chinese snowboarders get headaches when using helmets designed using western based ergonomic data because the helmet presses their heads).
From the third and last day, I underline the talk of the architect Michele De Lucchi; he gave the most poetic of all the presentations. He presented all his clients: Mr. Experimentation, Mr. Craftsmanship, Mrs. Nature, Mr.Industry, Mr. Market (a very tough client), Mr. Dimension and Mr. Proportion (very playful clients) Mr. Space (a very demanding client, because space is air and air is what keep us alive) and Mr.Conscience.
De Lucchi said that “the role of the artist in ancient times was to show the beauty of nature to humans, so, the role of designers is to bring the beauty of industry to humanity”.
Maybe it was his dense and long beard, maybe his paused talking tone, but it was like listening a wonderful tale full of experience, and wisdom advises.
The BODW forum ended with Ms. Zaha Hadid, who presented the new building for the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, a double tower that reminded me to a pack of instant noodles??¦ but she didn’t mentioned anything regarding her source of inspiration.
The overall impression of the event is that Hong Kong and China are doing really great catching up with international design standards. But local OEMs should believe and invest more in design and start their own brands in order to move ahead.
Italy, as a partner country of BODW 2007, spread that great and inspiring typically Italian passion for details in objects and spaces.
Next year partner country will be The Netherlands, with the theme: “open minds”
(oops,,,, it is the same motto used in the last Singapore Design Festival…) 
