DESIGNING FOR A CAUSE
The famous architects behind this year’s Ambassadors Ball have sent the creative community into a tizzy
Architecture aficionados and design devotees are counting down the days till October 27, when the Ambassadors Ball takes place at the Kerry Hotel. The creative directors of this year’s event are none other than acclaimed architect Rem Koolhaas, founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and OMA director David Gianotten. The pair have worked on multiple boundarybreaking projects, including the gravitydefying CCTV Building in Beijing, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and the Taipei Performing Arts Center, which is currently under construction and promises to be one of the most exciting and experimental cultural spaces in Asia.
Koolhaas and Gianotten will no doubt bring some of OMA’S out-of-the-box thinking to this year’s Ambassadors Ball, which is held annually to benefit the Design Trust, a grant-funding platform founded in 2014 by the Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design charity. Inspired by Hong Kong, Koolhaas and Gianotten have themed the ball around the idea of a “hyperenvironment”—a hyper-connected, hyper-dense city packed with the latest technology. This theme throws into sharp relief OMA’S latest research project: a years-long investigation into how the countryside is changing around the world.
On top of designing everything from the entrance to the ballroom to the table settings, OMA is donating an item—the details of which are still under wraps—for the ball’s auction, which is without fail one of the most spirited on the city’s calendar. Last year’s event raised a record HK$10.2 million, all of which went towards Design Trust grants for graphic designers, urban planners, architects and other creatives working in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta. Will OMA’S hyperenvironmentthemed ballroom lead to a hyperfundraising effort? For the sake of the city’s creative community, Hong Kong design lovers are keeping their fingers crossed— and their auction paddles at the ready.
To read more about this year’s Ambassadors Ball, turn to our feature on OMA on page 196, which features Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten in conversation with Marisa Yiu, co-founder of the Design Trust