Newsweek names DesignSingapore Scholar, Hunn Wai, as one of 5 ‘Designers of the Future’

July 06, 2012

Lanzavecchai + Wai (link) has been selected by Newsweek as one of the five ‘Designers of the Future’!

Lanzavecchia + Wai is a creative collaboration between Francesca Lanzavecchia and Hunn Wai. Hunn Wai (pictured above right) received the 2005 DesignSingapore Scholarship (link) and was an Overseas Promotion Partnership Programme (link) recipient for his debut showing at the Milan Fair in 2010.

Lanzavecchia says that, after finishing her master’s degree in 2008, she and Wai agreed to work toward designs that could fulfill the “human need to communicate through objects,” but only if the objects they brought into the world were clearly better—maybe more heartfelt—than what was already out there. “We both said that we didn’t want to be landfill designers, and fill the world with more trash.” Wai, 32, says that they don’t care how much or how little they sell, “so long as we get the point across.” (The Lightmate pillows are still only available on special order, priced in the neighborhood of $3,500, and the pair will be showing a very different one-off—a “space quilt” that’s closer to art—at Basel’s design fair. But they have also designed several pieces for mass production.)

One recent project had them making wheeled canes for the elderly, designed so that they double as stylish baskets, tea trays, and iPad cradles [ed: see our Milan Fair 2012 article featuring it here (link)]. The goal, Wai says, is “to reconcile the gap between the medical and the domestic” while addressing the ageism that pervades both design and society. Wai insists that the duo’s ultimate aim is to “embed a message” in each new piece they make.

Source: Newsweek/Daily Beast