Peng Wong

With a bachelor’s degree from Kingston University, Hardy has continued to study MDes Interior Design at GSA. His design research at Glasgow has combined philosophy and interiors, involving artificial intelligence, post-anthropocentrism, and bio-politics. Hardy has worked professionally as an architectural design intern in both Japan and China. Along with five other students, he has won the school competition for the Mack Light in recent. Hardy is a multiple scholarships recipient, and his work is shared on various websites. Hardy is looking for a dynamic design studio in the UK, where he can employ his creativity and specialisation, with interests developed.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to rethink the politics of health in a broader sense. The design research has centred the biopolitical philosophy studied by both Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. The latter mentions ‘naked life’, in which survival becomes the only human raison d’ être, and the state of exception becomes the new normal. Taking the totalitarian society portrayed in the film 1984, the author has envisioned the four ministries, which embodied the post-pandemic landscape and its social ideology. By reinterpreting the COVID-19 signs, the author has produced a set of graphical patterns employed in the spatial design. Through the four ministries, the project has speculated an ‘alternative world’, in which people sacrifice individual freedom to public health, and consequently live in a permanent state of fear and insecurity.