SENSORIAL ESTATES // HONG KONG PAVILION
For the London Design Biennale 2018 theme ‘Emotional States’, our team designed the experience, production, and design-build of the Hong Kong Pavilion. ‘Sensorial Estates’, focuses on the sensory experience of smell and its relationship with nostalgia and memory in the context of everyday life.
Exploring the emotionally profound link between smell and time/space, the Hong Kong Pavilion focuses on the exploration of how the sensorial experience of smell heightens nostalgia and memory within our everyday lives and how smells can take us back to physical places and states of being. If visitors have ever passed through Hong Kong, its sensorial estates are sleeping within the memory; the experience of the Pavilion, and its various sensorial estates, immerse the viewers into different emotive states through smell.
As the visitor moves through the pavilion to view the exhibited works and curated objects, they will interact with the scent experiences created within the space and through a variety of scratch-and-sniff wallpapers. The pavilion installation explores how ‘smell’ triggers our emotional state more intensively.
Four exclusively designed natural smells were extracted from experiences that are relevant to the history and cultural aspects of Hong Kong, and include: Egg Tarts, Roasted Duck, Sandalwood Incense, and Opium.
The spatial design and concept is theoretically inspired by Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, and graphically inspired by Andy Warhol and MC Escher. Funding is made possible in part by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (London), and several private donors.
London Design Biennale 2018 – Emotional States
‘Emotional States’ has been chosen to provoke a broad interpretation across design disciplines, with immersive and engaging installations that interrogate how design affects every aspect of people’s lives – the way we live and how we live – but also influences our very being, emotions and experiences. Together the countries’ responses to the theme will present an exciting laboratory of ideas that will investigate the important relationship between design, strong emotional responses and real social needs.
Emotions are universal, with shared meanings that transcend borders. Installations will explore the full spectrum of emotions as classified by Charles Darwin, in his 1872 work, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal. These emotions are; Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness and Surprise.
Visceral exhibits and experiences will evoke moods and explore a particular country or city’s design story. National entries will ask: how does design evoke, communicate and manipulate emotions? How can design promote and support well-being? Conversely, how can design provoke and address anger and stress? How might emotionally durable designs reduce the impact of consumption and waste? What are the possible consequences of robots as emotional machines?
The powerful theme allows visitors to question some of the big issues of our time and interact with brand new work by world-leading architects, designers, scientists, writers and artists in a broad, vibrant exhibition.
Instagram: @sensorialestates #EmotionalStates #LDB18
London Design Biennale – Hong Kong Pavilion
This project is made possible in part by
Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (London)
Parsons School of Design (New York)
Jeffrey Sun (New York)
Matthew Boras (New York)
Wendy W Fok (Hong Kong / New York)
WE-DESIGNS (Hong Kong / New York)
LAB-yrinth (Hong Kong / New York)
Design Lead
Wendy W Fok
WE-DESIGNS
Design Team
Camila Varon Jaramillo, Lead Producer & Designer
Eugene Ong, Graphic Design
Erin Lee Carman, Social Media
Communications
Lillian He, Head of Communications (Project)
Press
TimeOut
Reuters
BBC
BBC Podcast
Euro News
Unreserved
ClientLondon Design Biennale 2018LocationSomerset House, London, EnglandYear2018StatusComplete