Mimi Zeiger

Critic, editor, curator and instigator.

2018 Design Trust Seed Grant

“Criticism Now: Developing Architecture and Design Criticism in the Pearl River Delta” is a weeklong English writing workshop that aims to develop new critical voices in architecture and design in Hong Kong, a place that needs more communication channels to represent its growing creativity in architecture, design, and urbanism.

The Hong Kong workshop is one in a series of critical writing workshops led by Zeiger, organised by DESIGN TRUST. She has taught workshops internationally, including at the School of Visual Arts in New York, Harvard University in Cambridge, the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and the Aformal Academy in Shenzhen. Outcomes from this workshops include pamphlets, broadsheets, billboards, websites, debates, and performances. In a Hong Kong context, Criticism Now will add long-form essays and interviews to the body of work produced.

Additionally, Criticism Now brings together writers and editors for an in-depth discussion with the participants on present and future of design criticism in the Greater Bay Area.

The workshop has a creative format where participants work in a diversity of HK spaces, from an academic library setting, a co-working space, the newest “co-living” HK community area, in- between public spaces, to a bookstore context, to explore the act of critical writing using the city of Hong Kong and the local design community as both subjects and instigators.

Published participant essays:

Melody Yiu, Does the Xiqu Centre Live Up to Its Promise?, Zolima City Mag
Viola Gaskell, Why Hong Kong’s Buildings Are Clad in Bathroom Tiles, Zolima City Mag
Diego Caro Serrano, The Strange Intimacy of High Density, Zolima City Mag
Natasza Minasiewicz, New Modesty: In Conversation with Studio MLKK, Design Anthology