hong kong’s annual design festival detour returns in december 2025

hong kong’s annual design festival detour returns in december

deTour 2025: The Shape of Yearning takes over Hong Kong from 28 November to 7 December 2025, transforming the creative hub into a ten-day festival of exhibitions, installations, workshops, tours, and performances. Curated by designer Adonian Chan and organized by PMQ with sponsorship from the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA), the 2025 edition invites visitors to explore desire and design through the festival’s guiding ‘Design Trichotomy’ framework. Spanning the Courtyard & Marketplace and the Qube, the program features 17 installations and exhibits by creatives from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and abroad, including a major international commission by Switzerland’s Encor Studio.

ALCOVE IN SITU by Encor Studio | all images courtesy of deTour 2025

detour asks designers to uncover meaning of everyday objects

Founded as a platform for creative exchange, deTour is an annual design festival showcasing innovative ideas from local and international designers. The event is organized by PMQ, a landmark in Hong Kong’s SoHo district revitalised in 2014 as a creative hub housing over 100 emerging designers, which now serves as a central venue for design, cultural, and artistic events across the city.

The 2025 theme, The Shape of Yearning, unfolds through the ‘Design Trichotomy,’ encouraging visitors to interpret objects on three levels: aesthetics and materiality; sociocultural and historical context; and speculative, value-driven meaning. The festival asks whether design can reveal personal or collective longing, uncovering layers that often go unnoticed in everyday objects. Curator Adonian Chan notes that design surrounds us constantly, yet we seldom question what each object means or how it shapes us.

Decode by IE

The Shape of Yearning molds into exhibitions and installations

A highlight of deTour 2025 is the debut of Swiss collective Encor Studio in Hong Kong, known for kinetic sculptures and sound visualization. Their commissioned installation ‘ALCOVE IN SITU’ transforms the Qube into an immersive, responsive environment built from light, electrochromic films, and resonant sound compositions. The work explores presence, absence, memory, and perception, blurring boundaries as objects dissolve into afterimages and visitors become part of the sensory choreography.

Meanwhile, four feature exhibitions interpret The Shape of Yearning through distinct material and conceptual languages. Hong Kong art furniture studio TOUN 亠 (Renee Neoh and Samuel Choi) present Home Ecology – The Philo Modular System, a flexible aluminium home ecosystem designed to adapt to the rhythms and constraints of urban living. Graphic designer Shunta Sakamoto transforms graphic design into a multisensory encounter with Instrument.Play.Graphics, a modular graphic synthesiser that merges physical gestures with visual and sonic composition.

Italian designer Lucia Massari reimagines the traditions of Venetian glass in her primavera series, drawing inspiration from Arcimboldo’s floral portraits to create lamps where ornamentation becomes a means of reframing memory and heritage. Meanwhile, London/Hong Kong studio Nopqrst unveils Trueform, a constellation of graphics and sand-cast aluminium sculptures that fossilise the residual glue traces left by removed street posters and extend these urban artefacts into an interactive AR environment, where digital and material forms coexist.

Sanctuary of Becoming by Ciane Xavier x Homeqube

From an open call, 12 selected entries out of over 200 submissions expand the festival’s narrative through robotics, 3D printing, innovative materials, and explorations of identity. Highlights include GROOVIDO’s A Battle of Beasts, where ceramic-printed bricks become pieces for Chinese board games, blending tradition and play; Architecture and All | AAA with Becoming: Aerated Identities, a participatory installation of inflated PVC masks exploring performative identity; and Embracefloral × Arfalization with BloomDentity, which transforms MBTI personality data into bespoke 3D-printed vases that express the fluidity of self.

Public programs expand the festival’s experiential dimension where over 10 workshops and 40 sessions span art-tech, craft, sound, and wellness, including an AI design workshop connected to AAA’s installation and a visual diary workshop inspired by the reflections of influential designers and artists. Guided tours led by creators, influencers, and cultural commentators offer deeper insight into the exhibited works. Creative Voices talks and live performances further animate the festival, featuring appearances by Encor Studio and an edition of designer Hector Chan’s Design Club.

Moreover, building on previous momentum, deTour Kids, in partnership with birdintree, returns with hands-on parent-child design activities meant to nurture creativity and imagination in young visitors, emphasising the role of design in early development

primavera by Lucia Massari