Hong Kong’s issue with urban density is well known. Current population density measures 18,258 people per square mile (worldometers), while it’s estimated that some 100,000 people live in 40-square-foot high-rise cubicle apartments.

Andrea Ponti, an Italian who has lived in Hong Kong since 2013, has produced a series of chairs under his eponymous firm Ponti Design Studio that serve as a metaphor of this city’s unique urban landscape.

To be shown during Milan Design Week, Shadows in the Windows takes on two symbolic elements, a window and a seat, and presents them as objects in eight distinctive variations.

The window is the architectural element that represents the concept of urban density. In large apartment blocks and high rises, windows appear standardised and impersonal. They repeat in grids of identical rows and columns. At first sight. Yet a second glance reveals the story behind each window: the story of the residents living behind those windows, occasionally projecting their contours or shadows over it.

The seat by the window, the other symbolic element, projects its contour and its shadow over the window, and represents what is behind the window.

All eight seats share the same design concept: a square window frame, the contour of the chair, clean lines, steel and ABS. Yet, each seat is different and embodies a unique version of the overarching concept.

Shadows in the Windows will be shown at Milan Design Week, 4 – 9 April 2017.
Superdesign Show 2017, Selected Objects pavilion, Superstudio Piu, Milano.