Welcome to our world! 

PolyU Design is where we turn inspiration into life-changing innovation. As a student, alumni, teacher, or researcher we seek to constantly help people through design, and build the next generation of creators, community organisers, and leaders.

Create Possibilities. It is a motto that defines everything we do at PolyU Design. Our students, alumni and teaching community live and breathe this every single day. Our design work has a focus on making communities and lives better, and student projects constantly reflect this ethos. Students are not simply designing objects, but complex systems for society, ecology and economies. Interdisciplinary education, technology, redefined services and products for our age, and human and nature centred solutions form the concentration of what we do.

People, communities and the earth. Our values are what drive us. We strive to develop open minds, steer positive change, establish visionary entrepreneurship, practice authentic expression, and design responsibly. While many think of design as pure aesthetics, we teach our students to view design through the lens of the community, and understand the impact of design on people. Our teaching reflects this transformation: designers have changed from primarily working individually to now working as teams, and we embrace this new era.

Success comes together. We are not individuals, but rather, a collective. The School of Design has a rich heritage. Our belief is that excellent schools are built by communities. Indeed, our history and identity comes from the explosion of design that happened in the 1960s, and the emergence of Hong Kong’s industrious multinational business community.

The spirit of adventure. We constantly move forward into the new era of redefined products and services for the Hong Kong economy. PolyU Design has continued to build upon this ethos, within a new era of Hong Kong dynamism where we have a free economy fueling ambitious, risk-taking talent from our School. Our alumni contribute to communities daily, we never stand alone, and always link back to communities. This spirit of adventure, exploration and drive is exemplified by the likes of Dr Rebecca Lee Lok Sze, our alumna who became the world’s first woman explorer to leave her footprint in the Arctic, Antarctica and Mount Everest. Her can-do spirit highlights our lead to develop Hong Kong as a design knowledge hub through research, energy and pure grit.

Fostering talent. We seek to nurture our students with competitive, holistic and multidisciplinary academic inquiry, building critical thinking; innovation and creativity. And what better place to do this than Hong Kong, and its global community of talented teachers, researchers and students? With strong creative industries, we are able to attract more and more visionaries to build this city, and our School as a nexus for design, bolstered by strong funded operational spending and investment into research. Let’s make a brighter future!

Co-creating a better world. Ready to be part of our family? We welcome you with open arms, and look forward to solving some of the world’s most urgent and challenging problems, together.

Sincerely,

Prof. Kun-pyo Lee, Dean of School of Design

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