Responding to the current boom in home-ownership and home decoration among young, professional, urban Chinese, Hometime was a major exhibition for China about domestic interior design which toured China as part of Britain’s commercial and cultural campaign, Think UK, during 2003.

The subject of the home, the private space, has considerable public appeal at a time when global communications and technology threaten to eradicate difference in the forms and surfaces of the world: how can architects, designers and policy-makers continue to give people homes and products with personal significance?

Eight of Britain’s most celebrated designers were invited to design a room each for a character type from fiction, history or contemporary culture. Product and lighting designer Tord Boontje designed a boudoir, a "room of one’s own" for the modern woman. Tom Dixon, Creative Director for Habitat, designed a room for a statesman that expresses the best of Britain. Interactive designers Digit produced a virtual "home-from-home" for Li Tie, the Chinese footballer playing for Everton. Radical young architectural practices F.A.T. and Block designed a sybaritic bathroom-retreat for a celebrity couple and a live/work space for a 21st century Sherlock Holmes – one of the British "characters" best known in China. Ben Kelly, designer of the children's basement at the Science Museum, developed an environment for a visually impaired child. The final room focused on the needs of an elderly living with a younger family, designed by Arcola Collective, graduates of the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn Research Centre.

The exhibition was curated by the Design department of the British Council, Nick Barley and Gerrard O'Carroll. The exhibition was designed by Gerrard O'Carroll with graphic design by Studio Myerscough.

Schedule: September in Guangzhou, October in Chongqing, November in Beijing and December in Shanghai

For more information please contact: Alison Moloney