Hong Kong’s structural pressures are well documented: some of the world’s smallest homes, one of its fastest-ageing populations, and a manufacturing base that has spent three decades moving elsewhere. Design is often asked to comment on these conditions. This session asks something narrower and more practical: what can design actually build in response to them?

Held among the six exhibited pieces, the dialogue brings together furniture manufacturers, practising designers and academics. The first half examines the brief itself — what a chair, a table or a bench is being asked to do in a home of 200 square feet, or for a body that will use it for another forty years. The second half follows a single piece from the exhibition through its production history: the student sketch, the material the factory could source, the joint that had to change, the cost that decided the final form.

Speakers will also address what local manufacturing still does well, and what a design school owes an industry partner in return. Audience questions are taken throughout rather than saved for the end.

Conducted mainly in Cantonese with English support, and open to students, practitioners and the general public alike. Free admission; advance registration required as seating in the mall is limited.