We at Indesign Media Asia Pacific have always understood that the legacy of A+D is the work of many hands – many individuals who may cast a long shadow across many disciplines or excel ahead of the pack in one.

For over 16 years, we have celebrated our industry’s leading lights: our Luminaries. And, for the 2017 INDE.Awards, we look forward to adding another Luminary to our prestigious alumni.

Recognising the ongoing contribution of one icon to our industry, your 2017 Luminary will represent the richness of our region’s creative diversity and our industry’s innovative spirit. In short, your 2017 Luminary will stand for the individuality, expertise, bravery and intelligence of Asia Pacific’s A+D world.

As such, we are very proud to announce the shortlist for 2017’s Luminary. Our Indesign Media’s editors across Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia have compiled a lineup of A+D’s most influential innovators whose enduring legacy continues to inspire the shape the world of design yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Partnered with German manufacturer of intelligent and progressive ergonomic furniture, Wilkhahn, your 2017 Luminary will represent the innovation and bravery of design in our region.

Each of your 2017 Luminary nominees practice a form of design as ‘way-finding’: their legacies illustrate the personal, visceral responses we experience living through design. Their ‘way-finding’ work reflects and directs the nature of modern ways of living: the smallness and immensity of our world is exemplified here, simultaneously.

For the inaugural year of the INDE.Awards, you get to decide your 2017 Luminary.

Presenting the 2017 shortlist for the inaugural INDE.Awards

Sonny Chan

Founder of  Chan Sau Yan Associates, is one of our region’s most comprehensive and diverse architectural practitioners. After having graduated as an architect in 1963 at the Northern Polytechnic of London and thereafter trumping off his formal vocational instruction in Tropical Studies at the Architectural Association School the following year, Sonny Chan has worked in London with Arup Associates before returning to the Asia Pacific region to continue his practice with Kumpulan Akitek. After serving 29 years as a Senior Partner he founded his present practice Chan Sau Yan Associates (now incorporated into the renowned CSYA PTE LTD). With a truly global portfolio of work, his experience stretches as across an array of sectors including commercial, residential, recreational, and tourism projects. In part, such diversity is reflected through Chan’s ongoing commitment to fostering emerging design and architectural talent throughout the region. Chan has also served as a longtime tutor, examiner and adjunct professor in the School of Architecture (National University Singapore), and as an external critic at the University Malaya.

Paul Hecker and Hamish Guthrie

Founders of Hecker Guthrie, Paul Hecker and Hamish Guthrie draw on the foundations of design with principles that have been developed over ten years of practice. Their work is renowned for an ongoing commitment to authenticity, consideration and enthusiasm, always characterised by outstanding results. As a multidisciplinary practice, Hecker Guthrie’s approach to design has been to create a unique identity for all projects. This authenticity has resonated in the design solutions they have proposed over the years, as well as in the selection of materials and knowledge-sharing their work offers. The firm’s body of work stretches across the hospitality, residential, retail and commercial sectors, and the pair work both locally and abroad with each design drawing on their expertise in integrating interiors, building, objects and gardens together.

Kerry Hill

Kerry Hill is the director of the Singapore and Australia design practice Kerry Hill Architects, and has been a notably influential figure in South East Asian architecture for over 30 years. Having designed some of the most ambitious architectural projects across the Asia Pacific region, Hill’s work has an iconic sense of modernism within the realms of traditional settings. With an ever-growing portfolio of hotel, resort, residential, mixed use and public project work, Hill’s lauded designs are featured across the Asia Pacific region, and have been published in books, journals and magazines across the world. Hill has also been an eminent guest speaker at the Universities of Hawaii, Western Australia, Queensland and Singapore, and at national conventions in India, Sri Lanka and Australia.

Nik Karalis

Woods Bagot CEO, Nik Karalis, possesses a diverse portfolio of civic, architectural and interior projects. As a designer, his work has received acclaim to the tune of prominent design awards in Australia and abroad. Not content with success in the architectural world, Karalis has also worked under the Woods Bagot research and publishing sub-brand, Public, to bring many top architectural publications to the world, and along the way has transformed Woods Bagot into a globally relevant architectural practice. Karalis’ work crosses many boundaries, ranging from master planning, civic and commercial buildings, to intimate interiors. It’s Karalis’ ability to move between these complex disciplines that that ensures Woods Bagot’s success across multiple project types.

William Smart

William Smart is the founder and leader of Smart Design Studio, an architecture studio that channels a sense of pure modernism for the 21^st century. Leading a team of over 35, Smart’s team designs with rigour and imbues meaning into all of their projects. Believing that each new work is a chance for new opportunities, Smart harnesses the personalities and requirements of clients to achieve a bespoke and catered result. Smart’s career has spanned across architecture and interiors of many forms, always with respect to the environment in which a project sits.

Mun Summ Wong and Richard Hassell

Founders of Singapore’s WOHA, Wong and Hassell have a well-earned reputation for their combination of strong environmental and social principles, and top-level design talent. The pair have lead WOHA in designing a number of innovative, highly influential projects across the world. The duo’s best-known projects have been widely championed as benchmarks for sustainable design in the face of global climate change. WOHA’s architectural approach answers the joint crises of a changing world, unprecedented population growth in cities, and increasingly dysfunctional infrastructure. Wong and Hassell have lead a team intent upon improving the day-to-day existence of city residents.