Cover Editecture, co-founded by Jacqueline Chak a decade ago, is a multidisciplinary design studio in Hong Kong aiming to offer sustainable services and promote a circular future (Photo: Moses Ng)
Editecture, co-founded by Jacqueline Chak a decade ago, is a multidisciplinary design studio in Hong Kong aiming to offer sustainable services and promote a circular future (Photo: Moses Ng)
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Jacqueline Chak, the co-founder of Editecture, wants a better world—and she’ll use our rubbish to build it
Several years ago, Jacqueline Chak read something that shook her: by the year 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Thwarting that prediction is core to her sustainable design mission: to change our production methods, so that future generations and nature can still coexist.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of Editecture, the studio Chak co-founded with fellow Gen.T honouree Genevieve Chew. What began with just these two has since blossomed into a team of 25 and a 3,000 sq ft lab containing the city’s largest in-house 3D printer. It has also expanded philosophically, adding education to its mandate. The studio’s Edit Academy is already informing young people about sustainability and community empathy, and its Re-Edit Lab education truck will soon spread awareness about waste to every district in the city.
Read more: How zero-waste store Live Zero is redefining sustainability amidst economic challenges
Here, Chak looks back at a decade of turning trash into treasure.
When we first started, I asked our clients and contractors very naive questions. “After this event, we just ship everything to landfills. Is there any way to keep or reuse some of it, so we minimise wastage?” The men answered, “Silly girl—it’s not going to happen.”
In recent years, we started looking more into sustainable solutions for our clients, ourselves and the design industry. We are a design studio that provides products, services and solutions that are sustainably produced so that all of us together can create a more circular future.
We’ve accumulated all this R&D experience to make upcycled products with value. It’s not like [how] sustainability [was done] 20 years ago, when you’d just put 50 plastic bottles together to make a chandelier. Using trash and our 3D printer, we can create third-life products that look as good, or even better, than first-life products. [It’s] sustainability with technology.
Sustainability is all about education and the world. It’s about the next generation who are going to suffer if we don’t do something now. I think that’s one of the biggest reasons why we took on creating an academy.
We also help our clients to donate furniture to the community. We line up beneficiaries, like subdivided flat families, local schools and community centres. After our set-ups, we don’t bring all the furniture to landfills, but instead, donate it to all of these to homes and families.
People say, “If you can drive in Hong Kong, you can drive anywhere in the world.” I think it’s the same for design and architecture. There are so many regulations and so little space, so we have to think outside the box. A lot of people hate it but I look at it positively. If you can tackle all those restrictions and create something beautiful, that’s amazing.
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