They may exist only mid-career, but Neri&Hu have nabbed the height Honorary Award at this twelvemonth's Frame Awards. Here's why.

'Consider information technology an encouragement,' said Frame editor in primary Robert Thiemann when sharing the news of the award with Lyndon Neri and Rosanna Hu, 'to continue the path that you're on.' In the 14 years since becoming acquainted with the studio, we've seen its impressive designs only grow in scale, variety and cultural relevance. As Hu noted, from their first international media exposure to their offset Lifetime Achievement Award: Neri&Hu has come full circle with Frame. Here they tell Thiemann almost the journey so far, the contemporary creative climate, and their hopes for their careers to come.

In an interview yous did with us a couple of years ago, you said that when y'all set up shop in 2004, 'what was important to united states was to have a sense of identity equally Chinese creatives . . . Nosotros started with a passion for showing that Chinese inventiveness exists.' There's currently a boom of Chinese inventiveness. What do you consider to exist its identity? And how did you play a role in that?

LYNDON NERI: When we came to People's republic of china, relatively young, at that place were a lot of things that were quite alarming. Things were being demolished at an unprecedented charge per unit. We were appalled at the attitude behind preservation and demolition, let alone sustainability. And we encountered many clients that couldn't take cared less almost copying products or images from magazines. It was never about authenticity or trying to find themselves. The cardinal was being commercially viable, at a speed that we were not used to.

What really opened our eyes was going to Milan. I still vividly remember brands refusing to let u.s.a. enter their booths. We had cameras, and then their first thought was you lot're just going to copy u.s.. Rossana and I felt it was very wrong, but we also understood the sentiment, the fear. As diasporic Chinese, we arguably take Chinese tradition even more seriously because in that location's an added need to preserve our identity. Is it a particular style? Visual cue? That'due south not what we're interested in because that's rather superficial. We're trying to understand the essence. With this kind of confidence, we try to find meaning and purpose in what we do within the context we are practising. We can't correspond the unabridged land – something upward north is different from the middle, like here in Shanghai, and from downwardly south. Due east and west have differences likewise.

We didn't intend to be interdisciplinary. But we were asked to do architecture and interiors. And then there were a lack of proficient production designers and virtually of them were making knockoffs, and so we decided to venture into that equally well. Then graphics, branding and eventually teaching. Some phone call Neri&Hu an institution or a motion, but we're non that visionary. It was more of a necessity.

What exercise you lot consider to be your milestone project in that whole journey?

LN:There are many. A lot of people consider our teacup, a play on ZiSha or purple clay, to be Chinese in artful. It takes a particular Chinese material and abstracts it to a point where information technology's so simple, taking abroad all the ornament often associated with Chinese teacups and teapots. The Waterhouse, obviously, whose preservation brought us an international appeal. But fifty-fifty earlier that nosotros designed a Design Commonwealth store on the Bund that made people go 'whoa, this is interesting'. Retail that'southward anti-retail. Retail that does non take a window, only a door. Retail that reverses the notion of public and private. Lately a number of other projects have started to capture the attention of the architectural world, like our Tsingpu Yangzhou Retreat. And we're now working on a vino distillery for European brand Pernod Ricard, which should open in about a calendar month. That should be quite interesting to run across.

The Relic Shelter, a teahouse designed by Neri&Hu in Fuzhou, reuses the remains of a Qing dynasty official's residence.

Many designers are all the same very concerned with beauty. In contempo years nosotros've seen developments like Black Lives Matter and the Corona crunch, as well equally all kinds of natural phenomena related to climate change. And now topics like human-centricity, inclusivity and sustainability are gaining interest. I'k certain yous're nevertheless aiming for artful projects, but how do yous see your work relating to these global issues?

ROSSANA HU: I don't feel that the topics you mentioned depart from the question of beauty. You lot said 'aesthetics', and that'due south probably a better word to utilize, because dazzler is and so difficult to define these days. With dazzler there's good and bad, right? Cute and ugly. But aesthetics speaks of a certain judgment and standard. And I call up our societies take at present moved towards embracing those ideals into the standard of aesthetics. Aesthetics is a dimension of philosophy. Information technology's about homo beings questioning the meaning of life. Beauty used to be equivalent to nature – the closest representations of nature get beautiful. Only that'south not how information technology is at present. Then, how do nosotros judge dazzler? I think we're e'er looking for those standards. And I call back that standard today is how well nosotros serve the social club, how inclusive nosotros can become.

How do you meet the hereafter of spatial pattern developing?

RH: Nosotros're already seeing a lot of signs that betoken to a blurring of disciplines. You near don't need schooling to do what you desire to do, and people are oftentimes practising something they didn't go to school for. Blurring in the creative disciplines – painters designing spaces, production designers designing buildings, artists designing fashion, filmmakers designing shoes – will besides bring in a more interdisciplinary way of working. And digital platforms allow unlike people to be connected in unprecedented ways. I recollect they will atomic number 82 u.s.a. to a very dissimilar way of engaging work.

LN:I too think that the digital attribute of design is constantly trying to take humanity out of physical space. Retail, shopping, schooling. At present information technology's suddenly okay for families to not get together equally long as they can Zoom. When y'all're not physically together, at that place's no demand to take a dainty physical space. It's getting even more dangerous that we can use the digital world to fabricate notions of infinite that are perhaps not existent or authentic. Maybe I'm old schoolhouse – after all, this is a Lifetime Achievement Laurels – but I might equally well go to the grave fighting for infinite and the dignity of space. Otherwise pretty soon, architecture and interior design volition be obsolete.

RH: That's not truthful. I agree that the futurity is moving away from physical space. But I think architects and designers in the digital era ought to exist well versed in the net, considering they're going to be designing spaces they've never been to and that possibly no one can go to. Simply hopefully architects and designers will play a very important part in the pattern of these metaverses.

LN: I completely agree. But what I'm trying to say is that in that location is three dimensionality in two dimensions. It can't purely exist flatness for the sake of flatness. Otherwise, we'll just have graphic designers.

RN: Yes, but I think the digital historic period is going to bring us into not just three dimensions, only four and 5, where time volition be manipulated.

A project for the 2019 Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair, The Unfolding Village focused on China's disappearing villages and village civilisation.

What would you lot like to take achieved by the end of your career?

LN: We started practising belatedly, so we came out running. We decided we have to commencement 'catastrophe' our careers earlier, so we started education. We too started archiving – not so much just our work, just the fourth dimension and the generation in which we are working. We're trying to become the artists, architects, graphic designers, product designers and interior designers of our generation to start archiving some of the people that have influenced us, and some of the work we have produced during this particular menstruum of Chinese creative renaissance. We desire it to be a platform for discourse in the hereafter.

Nosotros started teaching – too abroad, at Yale and Harvard – to educate the next generation. Not about what nosotros similar and don't similar, just a fashion of thinking, of being rigorous, of having critical discourse. Hopefully this generation will care and have the intensity and initiative to bring nigh modify when information technology's needed.

Last merely non least: collaboration. We've started to think about the possibilities outside of architecture – sustainability, real estate, social living, new ways of working and travelling – and to find other brands and disciplines to work with us to find solutions.