Designers: Neri & Hu The Chinese design firm has become a cultural force in new modern design
For over a decade, architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu have been at the forefront of Chinese architecture and design. Through Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, an inter-disciplinary international design practice based in Shanghai and London, their projects span the globe across interior design, architecture and product design.
The duo has bridged their Chinese backgrounds with Western influences and exposure, bringing together a unique brand of accessible yet utterly forward design thinking. As part of The New Modern, Lane Crawford speaks to the designers about how they have become such a cultural force in design today.
Do you consider yourselves as ‘Chinese designers’ and what does this mean to you?
Traditional architecture forms the basis of our education, but culturally we are very much Chinese, and there are influences, particularly in our work that’s located in China. We also like to examine local culture of where our work is, so that depends on where the project is located.
The Chinese-ness of the design is less important to me than it is to the critics. Especially the foreign critics like to explore the question of identity. This is interesting as a topic of discussion, as it helps us to define who we are in terms of placing us within a context, but at the end, this is an after-thought, not a premise of our design work. Being a ‘Chinese designer’ is simply who we are. It's not really for us to define or accept.
How has this ‘Chinese-ness’ influenced your design?
Since our student days we have explored issues about identity and culture in our design work and in the end we still define ourselves as more Chinese than anything else. Re-development projects and historic renovations allow us to try different ways of interpreting culture and history.
In architecture, we explore the essence of Chinese spaces but the blurring of boundaries is equally important to us. One of those is the line between exterior and interior. We like to push the boundaries and see where we can go which allows for a new way of looking at conventions.
“We gain inspiration from some of our readings of cultural coding and signs, and the process of reworking these into relevant forms. Culture is such a big subject, and we are careful not to trivialize it or make it into a caricature.”
The idea of bringing old and new together is something that is ever present in your work…
On different levels, people can be reminded of the past. One of the most phenomenological ways is the impact of the material itself (old bricks, old wood, old tiles, etc.). This material alone, even if taken out of context, gives us a very direct and primal connection to the past. On a deeper level, old buildings can bring realizations about issues if the reconstruction or redesign is critical about what history means for people in the present. It isn’t that there is one right way to do this, but that being critical about the meaning behind ‘how’ we use this history is most important.
How does this tie in with the ‘Cabinet of Curiosity’?
The Cabinet of Curiosity is intended to hold objects that contain links to the many secrets of our personas that we wish to reveal, ask or memorialise. We imagine that these secrets are somehow, consciously or unconsciously tied to the inner sins we all try to hide. Through time, inevitably, all that is hidden is revealed. The cabinet design itself was inspired by the carts used in typical ceramic factories to wheel objects into the kiln for firing and the Cabinet of Curiosity aims to explore the centuries-old relationship between Japanese and Chinese design and manufacturing.
“We believe in architecture and design as a powerful cultural force. The functional aspects are less interesting for us, although as professional that's the prerequisite - your design must ‘work’ on a very realistic level. We believe in the subtext over the obvious and the poetic over the utilitarian.”
What architectural design trends have you been seeing in Hong Kong and China?
We definitely see a trend in more industrialised aesthetics, and also ‘grunge’, where raw and unfinished spaces are being utilised in interior and products alike. We also see a move towards nature. In terms of design in China, we think it is continuing to strengthen and become more relevant as businessmen are beginning to realise that design is crucial to the growth of their business.
