Everyday Design 2：Design Departing

There is an average of about 40,000 deaths in Hong Kong each year, and every HongKonger will inevitably come across things relating to “farewell”.

Death is a taboo subject that many people always want to avoid, yet birth, aging, illness and death are inevitable stages of life. As we cannot escape from them, it would be better for us to face them and make the necessary arrangements.

From her experience of contacting different elderly people, Dr. Yanki LEE, a scholar of Design Study, finds that death is always mentioned in their conversations, “It is up to us to plan for our deaths.” She feels that design can remind middle-aged people and young people to respect the elderly people’s thoughts on death, and through the process of fostering inter-generational creation, designing tools for farewell can explore the original meaning of death.

In fact, death is remote and difficult to imagine for ordinary people. As such, through some environmental settings and arrangements, we can get involved, so that personal feelings can be transformed into discussions of rational thinking.

Design Editor Ire TSUI said, “I have always thought that we could not choose our own ash scattering device in scattering of ashes in the Gardens of Remembrance. However, through different visits, I find out that the ordinance concerned stipulates that we can choose and use the ash scattering device according to our own wishes. But what does it mean by the ash scattering device we chose?”

From the issue of death to the design of “goods for death”, Product Designer LEE Chi-wing said, “The whole project is a co-creation plan, which is not the same as ordinary creation. This product benefits the public and their interests, and the items concerned will present how people face death, parting and the expectations and needs of thinking about their loved ones.”

To understand life and death better, the best way is to learn to share. CHUK Ka-lok, the founder of a café, said, “When participants come to Death Café, they don’t know who will be sitting next to them, and they will communicate with each other with mutual respect. I hope that after leaving Death Café, they can talk about life and death with people around them in a more open manner.”

Death has never been one person’s own business. How can we transform from fear of death to facing it proactively through a new design perspective?