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On-Site Report: ΔDesignArt 2026 Design Art Fair Newly Announced LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize Winner Jongjin Park Presents Relate
When “design” and “art,” two fields that may seem to occupy different points on a spectrum, meet and collide, what kind of sparks can emerge? Organized by The Place Taipei and curated by DESIGNSURFING and minari Brand & Culture co.,ltd, the third edition of ΔDesignArt returns in 2026 under the theme “CRAFTING ASIA — Asian Voices on Collectible Design.” The fair brings together the languages of Asian craft, design, and art through an expanded international lens. Open to the public free of charge for three days only, the fair runs from Friday, May 15 to Sunday, May 17, at The Place Taipei.
This year’s fair transforms 17 hotel rooms into exhibition spaces charged with creative energy from across Asia. For the first time, four leading international curators and fair founders from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia have been invited to Taiwan for dialogue and exchange. In addition, Asia’s largest craft biennale, the Cheongju Craft Biennale, presents a special exhibition room, while visitors can also view related series works by Korean ceramic artist Jongjin Park, newly announced as the 2026 winner of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. The fair also expands into the public areas on the 1st and 10th floors, with the thematic exhibition “Object Plaza” allowing works to meet travelers and visitors along the hotel’s everyday routes. Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the compelling world of design art.
“From craft to collectible design, Asia is reclaiming its narrative agency. The lived scale of a hotel allows design art to become not merely something to be observed, but a lifestyle proposition that can be imagined, used, and collected.” — Roni Hung, Deputy General Manager of The Place Taipei, organizer of ΔDesignArt
ΔDesignArt 2026 main visual. In this year’s theme, “CRAFTING ASIA,” the word “crafting” refers not only to craft itself, but also to the ongoing act of making and shaping. It signals that Asia is actively defining its own future in design art. The main visual echoes this thematic spirit, pairing a highly saturated orange background with blue ballpoint-pen lines while preserving an improvised, uncorrected creative state. This deepens the edition’s focus on action and presence, allowing the visual itself to become the trace of an act. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
Combining Public Exhibition Areas with the Thematic Exhibition “Object Plaza,” 17 Rooms Bring Together Creators from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea to Reveal the Distinctive Language of Asian Craft
The name ΔDesignArt takes its key symbol from Delta, the mathematical sign for a variable. This small symbol suggests that when variables such as material, technique, and ways of seeing are placed within the spectrum between design and art, works can open onto unexpected possibilities. Since its first edition, themed “Spectrum,” which opened up the boundaries of creative practice, and the 2025 edition, “Pairing,” which explored the depth and breadth of cross-disciplinary collaboration, the 2026 edition brings together three years of accumulated energy and turns its lens toward an Asian perspective. It brings together creators and design-art organizations from Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, while also inviting four international curators and fair founders to participate in person. Participants include Hyeyoung Cho, a Korean independent curator and Korean Commissioner / Expert Panel member of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize; Budiman Ong, founder of Indonesia’s JIA Curated; Yuta Takeda, founder of Tokyo design hotel DDD Hotel, PARCEL gallery, and the design-art events alter. and EASTEAST_; and ShiKai Tseng, a Taiwanese curator, designer, and full-time Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Shih Chien University. Together, they invite viewers to consider: as Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and other places develop their own vocabularies of design art, how might Taiwan respond, and where might it position itself within this emerging map?
ΔDesignArt 2026 invites four leading international curators and fair founders, together with the Cheongju Craft Biennale, to Taiwan for exchange. From left: Steven Shen, CEO of Hotel Royal Group; Taiwanese curator ShiKai Tseng; Budiman Ong, founder of Indonesia’s JIA Curated; Hyeyoung Cho, Korean Commissioner / Expert Panel member of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize; Yu-Chen Hung, Deputy General Manager of The Place Taipei; Byeon Gwang-sub, Chairperson of the Cheongju Craft Biennale Organizing Committee; and Yuta Takeda, founder of Japan’s DDD Hotel. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
ΔDesignArt 2026 also expands its exhibition spaces into the hotel’s public areas. In the 1st-floor lobby, the thematic exhibition “Object Plaza,” co-curated by Sally Lin, Janet Fang, and Yen-An Chen, takes “a collective portrait of objects” as its concept. Objects from different contexts—including nature, industry, design, art, antiques, and collectibles—are deliberately placed side by side without classification or labels. The first question posed to visitors is: is the object before us a tool, an artwork, or a collectible? As visitors carry this question upstairs into the exhibition rooms, they may find their own ways of seeing objects subtly prompted or transformed.
ΔDesignArt 2026 extends its exhibition spaces into the hotel’s public areas. In the 1st-floor lobby, curators Sally Lin, Janet Fang, and Yen-An Chen co-curate the thematic exhibition “Object Plaza.” (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
On the 12th floor, where the main exhibition area is located, the guest rooms of The Place Taipei become gathering places for refined craft and creative inspiration. A major highlight is the “LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize finalists and alumni” exhibition room, presented in Taiwan with LOEWE FOUNDATION authorization for the first time. The room brings together related works by artists who have previously been selected as finalists for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize. This is also the first time that related works by finalists of this internationally significant award have been presented in Taiwan as a small-scale group exhibition. The prize recognizes outstanding practices in contemporary craft. Korean ceramic artist Jongjin Park, introduced by Korean curator Hyeyoung Cho, has just won the 2026 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize with Strata of Illusion. In this room, audiences can see his Artistic Stratum series, which employs the same concept and techniques, revealing the textures and warmth created through layers of kitchen paper, white porcelain slip, and high-temperature glaze. In the same room, visitors can also view wood works by Didi NG Wing Yin (Hong Kong / Finland), glass works by Maki Imoto (Japan), and paper sculptures by Pao Hui Kao (Taiwan / the Netherlands), together echoing the fair’s theme, “CRAFTING ASIA,” and condensing the richness of Asian craft.
The “LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize finalists and alumni” exhibition room brings together related works by artists previously selected as finalists for the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize, including works that trace the development of practices by Maki Imoto, Didi NG Wing Yin, and Pao Hui Kao (left). The room also features Artistic Stratum series works by Korean ceramic artist Jongjin Park, the newly announced 2026 LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize winner (right). (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
The special exhibition room presented by Korea’s Cheongju Craft Biennale, the largest craft biennale in Asia, features works by six artists: Sun Wooyong, Lee Jieun, An Eunkyung, Pyeon Sojung, Jongseok Lim, and Hong Sujoung. Works that expand the possibilities of glass, lacquer, and other craft media through distinct approaches encounter one another throughout the room, creating dialogues among the works and with the surrounding environment. Byeon Gwang-sub, Chairperson of the Cheongju Craft Biennale Organizing Committee, also visited Taiwan for the opening event to share the biennale’s context and spirit, adding greater international depth and significance to ΔDesignArt 2026. Nearby, a room bringing together fiber-structure artist Sung Rim Park, metal craft artist Yoonjeong Lee, and 3D-printing art unit Seasoning.objet presents a diverse landscape of contemporary Korean design art.
Top row / Cheongju Craft Biennale presents a special exhibition room, with Chairperson Byeon Gwang-sub visiting Taiwan in person for exchange. Bottom row / A room bringing together artists working respectively in fiber structure, metal craft, and 3D printing presents a diverse landscape of contemporary Korean design art. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
Among Taiwanese creators, Zhen Zhen Stained Glass Lab presents a new work that moves from everyday lighting into sound and moving-image installation. Combining traditional stained-glass craft with innovative technological light effects, the space becomes a sci-fi-like realm formed by glass, light, and music. Clothes.ZIP, a creative practice that began as a graduation project from the Department of Visual Communication Design at National Taiwan University of Arts, returns for its third participation with a fresh set of ideas. This time, it presents previous painting works made from second-hand clothing together with the new dessert-inspired installation series Yum Yum and the small-scale project ALL IN ALL, inviting visitors into a new world of textile possibility.
Left / Zhen Zhen Stained Glass Lab exhibition room. Right / Clothes.ZIP exhibition room. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
Yen-An Chen, who transforms field research into design objects through the brand ayaᵃ, and Ting-Hsuan Chang, whose practice focuses on states of material flow and processes of formation, present works including Neon Lamp Series and Dipping Net Series, moving between coolness and warmth, solidity and flow. THZ Gallery presents works by Japanese artists Kazunori Onaka and Yoshihiro Nishiyama, as well as Taiwanese artist Wei-Cheng Wu, while also introducing Sabotensi, a plant shop known for selling “transparent cacti,” revealing multiple expressions of ceramic and glass. At Archive Curatorial Agency, Taiwanese artist CIZ creates “spatial breathing” through a dynamic balance among minerals, wood, and plants, while Japanese artist Tamako Yamada uses plant-dyed textiles to express the quietness of matter after its return to the earth, symbolizing the “sedimentation of time.” Beneath an appearance that seems solid and calm, both practices reveal unexpected delicacy and lightness. Through their subtle resonance, the exhibition-room theme “Trace and Kinetic” takes shape.
Top row / Yen-An Chen and Ting-Hsuan Chang exhibition room. Bottom row / Left: THZ Gallery exhibition room; right: Archive Curatorial Agency exhibition room. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
In the room by Japanese gallery galerie a, artist Masayuki Kinuta, known for reconstructing animal forms with small pieces of fabric, brings cats to life in vivid poses through the craft of fabric sculpture, with each stitch carrying a sense of devotion. Enjo Yamazaki, who is both a poet and musician, inscribes poetry into vessels made from diverse materials, transforming language into a deeper sensory presence. Kana Ueda’s ceramic works are characterized by organic forms and finely carved patterns created through inlay techniques, evoking associations with nature. In the JILL D'ART GALLERY room, artist Iruha Amano’s installation seems to possess an invisible gravity, drawing viewers in to sense the “posture” and “presence” held within all things.
Left / JILL D'ART GALLERY exhibition room. Right / galerie a exhibition room. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
This year’s ΔDesignArt also brings together several significant “first” milestones for Taiwanese creators. Designer Hsiang Han Hsu’s room draws visitors with the orange-red glow of flame. His presentation features a new fireplace work created in collaboration with Tenderflame, combining artistic expression with practical use. Following the recently concluded Milan Design Week 2026, this is the first time the work has been publicly shown in Asia. Visitors are also invited to explore the creative universe he has developed over the course of his practice. Sally Lin presents her long-term creative trajectory in the form of a solo exhibition at ΔDesignArt for the first time, revealing how a senior designer, educator, and curator maintains sensitivity and vitality between education and practice.
Left / Hsiang Han Hsu exhibition room. Right / Sally Lin exhibition room. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
Designer Yang Shui-Yuan focuses on extending the potential of existing everyday objects. This time, he publicly presents an experimental creative series for the first time, combining metal, wood, and other crafts shifting from the vocabulary of industrial design toward a more open-ended creative direction. META Design, known for transforming existing materials, makes its first public presentation of the experimental project Time, Temperature and Development, using recycled glass as its medium. By controlling the material transformation of glass from a solid to a molten state, standardized industrial products are reshaped into artworks with new meaning. The ercoffice + For 3 room is jointly presented by Netherlands-based designer Erco Lai and For 3 Design Studio. Lai, who seeks to realize symbiotic circular relationships through observing and imitating nature, presents works created in collaboration with Taiwanese companies for the first time, exploring the possibilities of design across different countries and fields of practice.
Left / Yang Shui-Yuan exhibition room. Center / META exhibition room. Right / ercoffice + For 3 exhibition room. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
The “Wuba Yang + nothingshop” room marks the first joint exhibition by the artist siblings. nothingshop (Yang Hsiang-An), who has long worked in installation art and character design, combines miniature cities and figure sculptures made of concrete with plant containers. Paper artist Wuba Yang presents the Paper Fern series. Brought together by the shared living language of “plants,” the two open a dialogue at The Place Taipei around hardness and fragility, civilization and nature, craft and design.
Wuba Yang + nothingshop exhibition room. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
The public exhibition area on the 10th floor should not be missed. From the moment the elevator doors open to the lobby and restaurant spaces where travelers move, rest, and dine, carefully composed design-art installations and displays are woven into the hotel’s everyday circulation, allowing design art to become part of the hotel’s everyday scenery. The conceptual installation jointly created by Japan’s HONOKA and Taiwan’s Ti Studio is based on HONOKA’s blue vessel series TRACE OF WATER and green vessel series TATAMI ReFAB PROJECT, bringing vessels, botanical sculptures, and home objects into elegant conversation with the hotel space and the flow of people. The scenery, which at first glance resembles small trees scattered throughout the space, comes from MOBJE, a Japanese interior-object brand by Fujii Hat. It extends the craft of hat making, a practice of creating “three-dimensional objects close to the body,” from the body into space, opening up new contemporary possibilities for millinery craft. monouno, founded by Taiwanese artists Hsu Jui-Chien and Chiang Chiao-Chin, combines artistic thinking with usable furniture, creating objects that respond to the beauty of architecture and the environment.
The 10th-floor public exhibition area creates a design-art landscape flowing through everyday life, with Japanese and Taiwanese brands including HONOKA, Ti Studio, MOBJE, and monouno.
An Art Salon for Design Students: Exploring a New-Generation Imagination of Collectible Design
Positioned as a design-oriented hotel, The Place Taipei combines its brand spirit of Fun, Fusion, and Fashion with a long-standing commitment to making Taiwan more visible through curatorial practice. Each year, the hotel continues this founding vision by selecting outstanding works through the ΔDesignArt Student Open Call and presenting them free of charge in the Design Students Art Salon, opening a broader stage for students in design and art beyond the format of graduation exhibitions.
Chad Liu, curator of ΔDesignArt and General Manager of DESIGNSURFING / Admira Gallery, notes that this year’s open call received an enthusiastic response: “It shows that this exhibition theme speaks directly to issues that matter to today’s creators and students in Taiwan. I am glad that we can build a stage here where students can fully express their creativity.” Yu-Chen Hung, Deputy General Manager of The Place Taipei, was equally impressed by the results: “Under the theme of Crafting, we were initially concerned that the scope might be too broad. Instead, we saw many works that integrate diverse materials and techniques. Taiwan’s students are truly outstanding!”
Selected by the four international curators and fair founders participating in this year’s fair, together with Akio Aoki, founder of DESIGNART TOKYO, who has participated in past editions of ΔDesignArt, and Jaeyong Kang, Artistic Director of the 2025 Cheongju Craft Biennale, six works are being presented. Chang Yun-Hsin’s Bloomi transforms the emotions and roles carried by bamboo in personal experiences of growth into a pendant lamp. Through deep exploration of bamboo’s physical properties, the work challenges the tension limits of bamboo strips as they bend and overlap. Lin Yi-Hsiang’s Fish Swimming in Water uses ceramics as its medium to explore generative relationships in processes of fracture and reconstruction, allowing the object, through the acceptance of fracture, to transform into a new structure and visual language. Huang Shao-Szu’s From Thrive Within The Soul draws on a biblical passage and uses hot-melt glue in an innovative way to emulate mycelium, creating a fiber-like work that expresses the transparent and intertwined texture of mycelium while redefining fiber.
ΔDesignArt’s Design Students Art Salon presents six outstanding student works selected for this year’s edition, showing how young creators respond to the theme “CRAFTING ASIA.” (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
Chiu Hsin-Hui’s Afterform - FDM Sculptural Experimental Vase uses shaping, hardening, and dyeing to create soft, silk-like folds in hard plastic, moving beyond the idea of hot-extruded objects as the “endpoint” of form. Lacquer Rhythm by Cheng Ya-Wen and Lu Po-Chen combines lacquer craft with acoustic products and digital manufacturing, transforming traditional lacquerware into a functional soundbar product. LEAHARD Hardened Leather Experimental Furniture, co-created by Lai Pin-Wen and Lai Pin-Yun, is based on the concept that “hardened leather itself becomes structure.” By controlling variables such as humidity, temperature, pressure, and time, the work hand-shapes leather and fixes it into sculptural form. These experiments reveal another meaning of CRAFTING: craft does not stop at tradition or remain in the past, but is a method for the new generation to connect with and create the future.
Left / Chiu Hsin-Hui, Afterform - FDM Sculptural Experimental Vase. Right / Lai Pin-Wen and Lai Pin-Yun, LEAHARD Hardened Leather Experimental Furniture. (Image courtesy of The Place Taipei)
Curators and Fair Founders from Four Countries Exchange In-Depth Perspectives and Listen for the Echoes of Asian Design Art
During the fair, ΔDesignArt International Forum sessions are held daily at The Place Taipei. Each year, the forum attracts many participants, and this year multiple international curators and fair founders will attend in person. Across five sessions, audiences can gain insight into the design-art thinking and momentum emerging across Asia. This year’s topics include, on Friday, May 15, “The Power of Co-Creation: The Formation and Expansion of Southeast Asia’s Design-Art Ecosystem” and “Asia as a Creative Center: Local Contexts and Global Connections”; on Saturday, May 16, “From Creation to Market: How Can Collectible Design Become Possible?” and “The Management Methodology of Design Art: Building Cultural Systems from Hotels to Exhibitions”; and on Sunday, May 17, the closing talk, extending from the thematic exhibition, “OBJECT PLAZA | How Is the Value of Objects Created?” For detailed forum descriptions and registration information, please refer to The Place Taipei’s official ACCUPASS page. Each session is priced at NT$250 per person.
In addition, ΔDesignArt curator Chad Liu will join designer Hsiang Han Hsu on Saturday, May 23, at the “2026 Young Designers’ Exhibition | Border Salon” to present a talk titled “Future Trends of Collectible Design in Asia from the Perspective of Milan Design Week,” further extending the dialogue generated by this year’s fair. The talk is free to attend, though a ticket to the Young Designers’ Exhibition is required. Beyond the physical exhibition, the ΔDesignArt online exhibition area will, as in previous years, gather creator interviews, perspectives from international curators and fair founders, and video documentation, building a contemporary archive across the fields of design and art. Related content will be available on The Place Taipei’s event website and the DESIGNSURFING website.
Located between Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia, Taiwan possesses both a geographical advantage as a hub and a culture marked by diversity and flexibility, making it especially well suited to become a place where dialogue takes shape. As Taiwan’s first art exhibition platform focused on designers’ perspectives, ΔDesignArt 2026 turns the potential of design art into a concrete scene. The true excitement of the fair is not only in seeing a rich variety of works, but in repeatedly breaking open established imaginations and definitions. Just as the Δ in the fair’s name suggests, the exhibition reminds us that even in ordinary everyday life, we can look at the objects and world around us with new eyes.
ΔDesignArt 2026
■ Dates / Opening Hours:
－VIP and Media Preview｜Thursday, May 14, 2026, 14:00–19:00
－Public Opening｜Friday, May 15 – Sunday, May 17, 2026, 11:00–19:00, free admission
■ Event Information: The Place Taipei Facebook and Instagram
■ Venue: The Place Taipei
■ More Information: The Place Taipei Official Website https://lihi3.me/ww6P1
■ Organizer: The Place Taipei
■ Curated by: DESIGNSURFING; minari Brand & Culture co.,ltd
