Local Innovation as Milan’s SaloneSatellite Comes to Hong Kong

There are more than a hundred design objects on display in West Kowloon this month, each representing the 25 years the SaloneSatellite has brought work by young designers into Milan’s Salone del Mobile, the world’s most prominent furniture fair. But only one is from Hong Kong: the Triplex Stool by local architect and designer Dennis Cheung.

Cheung is the founder of Studio Ryte, a small design practice based in Wong Chuk Hang that — like so many Hong Kong design studios — seems to work on everything at once. They’ve designed exhibitions, tea shop interiors, classrooms, furniture and, most recently, a textile and agricultural incubation centre in Xinjiang that was fashioned out of a defunct factory. But the Triplex Stool represents something that few other Hong Kong design outfits are doing: experimenting with new materials. 

“The team is very hands-on and we speak with factory engineers with immense material knowledge,” says Cheung. “Exploring new materials not just aligns with my interest in engineering and fabrication but also creates the tools for architects and opens up possibilities for new functions and new experiences.”

The material in question is flax – not the seed you have in your granola, but the plant’s fibre, which has an exceptional tensile strength. Cheung wanted to design a stackable, lightweight, modular stool that could be disassembled for easy transport, and which would also biodegrade if it was ever thrown away. “Originally I wasn’t aware of flax fibre,” he says, but after exhibiting another piece of furniture at the SaloneSatellite in 2018, he met an engineer who introduced him to the wonders of flax, which grows abundantly in Europe, helps restore nutrients to the soil in between different rotations of crops, and requires relatively little water. 

The design of the stool is like a moodier version of the plastic stools that are common in affordable Hong Kong restaurants, right down to the inward curve in each of its three legs. “We found that people feel a strong emotional attachment to that curve,” he says. “Making the stool was not just about technical considerations. There are all these cultural influences that come out into it, everything from cathedrals to those plastic stools.” Cheung describes the style as “Gothic meets Qing Dynasty metalware.” 

To make a prototype of the stool, Cheung worked with a manufacturer in Stuttgart, which normally makes carbon fibre car shells for companies like Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. It was completed in 2020 and won several design awards that year. But Cheung wasn’t quite satisfied, so he continued tweaking the design, adding curves that resemble the grooves of a potter’s fingers in clay, while also refining the material aspect to make it easier and more affordable to produce. (The prototype was assembled using a bioresin, but Cheung now uses a compostable corn-based polylactic acid.) Four versions later, he brought the stool to Milan, where it won the second prize at the 2023 edition of SaloneSatellite.

“It turns out to be incredibly sturdy, very comfortable and with its own personality,” says Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who presided over the SaloneSatellite jury. “We also like the fact that there is something that is at the same time raw and super sophisticated. And he used this material and remained true to it, without trying to paint over it. The beauty of the fibres shine.” 

But why spend so much time and energy on a stool that serves the same function as countless existing objects? Cheung says it comes down to the simple fact that most furniture is thrown away. More and more companies are producing affordable but flimsy “fast furniture,” analogous to cheap, trendy fashion that is often discarded after a single season. In the US alone, more than 12 million tons of furniture are thrown away every year, while in the UK, more than 22 million individual pieces of furniture meet the same fate. 

The Triplex Stool is specifically designed to be easy to move from home to home and city to city, and its natural materials are exceptionally durable, so that in theory it should last for generations. But in the unfortunate case where it is thrown out, its biodegradability will mean it spends far less time decomposing in the dump. “I’m trying to make the future a better place,” says Cheung.

In many ways, the stool and its design reflect Cheung’s own journey as a designer. “It’s the crystallisation of all these thoughts and experiences I’ve had over the years,” he says. Raised in Hong Kong, he became fascinated with the city’s architecture when he was a teenager. He roamed the streets with his film camera, documenting whatever caught his eye. “At that time, I was taking 20 rolls of film every month,” he recalls. “I was intrigued by the city’s landscape and amazed by the old and new communities intertwined. I was not just interested in buildings on streets but also infrastructure like bridges and [the MTR]. Their structure and engineering constantly fascinates me.”

After earning an undergraduate degree in architecture at the University of Hong Kong, he continued his studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is where he became interested in the technical and material side of fabrication. After graduation, he led a peripatetic life, working in architecture and design studios in Italy, Japan and China before returning to Hong Kong, where he launched Ryte in 2017. Its mix of furniture and household objects — which can be purchased through the studio’s own online shopping platform — and interior design and branding projects reflects the necessity of being flexible in a city like Hong Kong. 

“I think I was naïvely optimistic when I came back to Hong Kong, but the commercial sector here is very profit driven,” he says. Clients are sceptical of innovation unless it has a clear benefit to their bottom line. But that’s also motivation for Cheung and his team to make something like the Triplex Stool as easy to produce as possible. “We’re trying out different fibres because flax is expensive,” he says. “There are a lot of other natural materials that are not traditionally used for furniture and construction.” 

In his commercial work, Cheung uses as much recycled plastic and timber as possible, to reduce its ecological footprint, and he has started working with manufacturers in Guangdong to build up a local network of reliable suppliers who are open to experimentation. “To work on something more challenging and sustainable, we need to build up trust,” he says.

Back in West Kowloon, the Triplex Stool sits amidst other products that have distinguished themselves at SaloneSatellite. The initiative was founded in 1998 by Venezuelan-born, Milan-based curator Marva Griffin Wilshire as a way for designers under the age of 35 to exhibit their work at the Salone del Mobile. “There was nobody taking care of these young designers [at the time],” she says. Since then, more than 14,000 designers from 58 countries have been exhibited. 

Just as Cheung met the engineer that helped inspire the flax fibre stool, many have found the connections to manufacturers they need to make their design ambitions a reality. “We see the urgency of developing new materials, so we use our profits from our commercial work to fund our experiments and R&D ourselves,” he says. “A design studio like ours is rather small, but because of that, we’re agile.”

SaloneSatellite Permanent Collection 1998–2024 runs until November 21, 2024 at the Arts Pavilion in West Kowloon. Click here for more info.