Best of the Old and New

The world recently reached an important milestone for futurists and movie buffs: October 21, 2015, the day in the fictitious future that Marty Mcfly, the protagonist of the 1980s Back to the Future trilogy, travels to. When Mcfly enters the future, he finds a world that offers, among other technological delights, hoverboards and self-tying shoelaces. In popular culture, the date October 21, 2015, became a checkpoint where geeks of the world could gauge whether we as a species have evolved, depending on the availability of the aforementioned innovations.

While we don’t have self-tying laces yet, we do have hoverboards. Sort of. In a brilliant piece of content marketing, Lexus developed what is essentially a skateboard without wheels and which floats an inch off the ground (Google it). The video clip that shows top skaters using the board went viral, and techies all over the world fist bumped each other. The hover board is not for sale yet, sadly, but a whole slew of other high-tech toys are—including that personal submersible pictured on this page, which would make a perfect Christmas present for outdoorsy types (page 290).

But being futuristic is not just about being shiny and new. When it comes to city planning, progress can take an altogether more patinated and aged form. In our feature Revival of the Fittest (page 248), Christopher Dewolfe looks at how preservation has become the battleground for Hong Kong urbanists. For too long, colonial-era structures have been razed to make room for 1970s Bauhaus bastardisations that only look good in intense cityscapes as photographed by Michael Wolf et al. With the unveiling of the old Central Police Station, along with the success of PMQ and other such revitalisation projects, Hong Kong may finally be acknowledging its rich architectural heritage.

New ideas typically come from the new guard, and in this, our Design Issue, we are delighted to showcase the latest members of the Academy Ball Organising Committee of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in a space age-themed photo shoot in the lead-up to the fundraising gala, to be held on December 12. And with the hotly anticipated Star Wars film hitting screens soon, who can blame these fresh-faced A-listers for wanting to zip up their spacesuits and get busy with laser beams this festive season?

I’ve been a loyal user of Smythson diaries for some years. I normally use the Portobello diary but this Soho diary in grey leather has caught my eye. Its week-toa-view layout with an adjacent to-do page is just the thing to get your 2016 off to a productive start.

smooth operator This futuristic submersible, the Deepflight Dragon, was created by the man who designed the mini submarine used by James Bond in For Your Eyes Only