IDPA Japan Design Award

Instant Garden

by Su Chang Design Research Office

Project Description


Instant Garden is an invitation to explore how humans and works of art could emerge in relation to each other. An invitation to recollect our sense of curiosity, and to discover new associations and experiences, for both the anticipated and unexpected.
The design transforms Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre’s viewing space into an environment that hosts encounters and sensations, featuring a diverse collection of sculptures from various cultural and geographical background. The tall and short walls are curved and straightened to create compressed and expanded views in both lateral and diagonal directions. Marbles are digitally scanned and printed; their textures are symmetrized, mirrored, and multiplied; the dark chrome vinyl is subtly refracted and reflected. Thick walls transform into deep spaces, and many places reveal themselves for our intimate interaction with the artworks.
In search of a sustainable construction method for the exhibition, we collaborate with our contractor to create a lightweight assembly system with easy-to-recycle wood studs and thin finishes, reducing transportation load and material waste. Despite its thinness, the dark chrome vinyl wrap makes a deep sense of space, rendering the surrounding artworks into the background with unique textures and materialities. The entire garden was assembled in three days.

Su Chang Design Research Office


Su Chang Design Research Office brings together design, research, and action to rebuild architecture's relationship with the environment. Our work innovates familiar-seeming elements through contemporary cultures, new technologies, and environmental considerations, provoking a broader imagination of architecture as geography. The projects embrace multiple senses of materiality and cultures of living within the clear formal language of architecture. We have taken a hands-on and open design approach to envision architecture as spatial infrastructures that support future iterations and adaptations, encouraging sustainability, diversity, and participation.

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