1×Many Many×1

An exhibition that was part of ‘deTour’ and the concurrent ‘Business of Design Week’ in Hong Kong. In keeping with the overall exhibition theme of ‘Use-Less’, Office for Product Design staged a small contextual display examining takeaway food packaging and juxtaposed disposable food containers, chopsticks and plastic bags with some reusable alternatives designed and developed specifically for this occasion.

Extract from the exhibition booklet:

“Part of our role as product designers is to develop new and desirable products. However, we also have a responsibility to suggest better ways of doing things and make improvements to products, processes and behaviours which can simultaneously benefit the individual, society at large and the environment. Currently there is much talk of sustainable design, but on a practical level, how can we realistically encourage people to be less wasteful?

This small exhibition highlights a Hong Kong favourite - take-away food - which generates a surprising amount of waste for every meal consumed. By juxtaposing three disposable objects integral to take-away food with contrasting reusable alternatives, we pose the question: should we use many things once or can one thing be used many times? While there are plenty of disposable products superficially marketed as ‘green’ or ‘environmentally friendly’, they often don’t address one of the more fundamental issues of sustainability, namely that of people’s behaviour. An alternative approach is to design products which encourage reuse. Appealing everyday objects with functional, aesthetic, material and social longevity. Objects which people will want to keep and reuse time and again.”