onebite’s UK Debut at London Design Festival 2025
From HK to UK: Hong Kong’s architecture-based design practice One Bite Design Studio is set to make its UK debut at the London Design Festival 2025 with its travelling exhibition, ‘The Flavour Library’.
A Vital Asian Voice: The exhibition stands as one of the few showcases from Asia in this year’s festival, offering a fresh perspective on urban design from a leading global metropolis.
A Cross-Cultural Dialogue: ‘The Flavour Library’ will introduce the UK and European audience to distinctive placemaking philosophies and community-led urban design from Asia.
Creative Dialogue Series: The exhibition will be complemented by a series of curated dialogues, convening creative leaders from architecture, urban planning, and design.
HONG KONG – Hong Kong’s architecture-based and multi-disciplinary design practice, One Bite Design Studio, today announced its UK debut at the upcoming London Design Festival 2025 in September. The studio will present ‘The Flavour Library’, an interactive exhibition and creative dialogue series poised to bring an Asian perspective to one of the world’s most prestigious design events. This milestone exhibition will explore the philosophy of community-centric design, sparking a cross-cultural conversation between East and West on building better cities.
The Flavour Library – Mapping Cities Through Palate
The Flavour Library, conceived as a travelling exhibition, will collect and share the essence of cities worldwide, continually offering new perspectives on urban environments. Born from a decade of reflection during our 10th anniversary, it invites you to reimagine urban design through an entirely new dimension – flavour.
“At onebite, we try to sprinkle a pinch of humour over our designs. Behind every design project—be it a public playground or a pop-up installation—is an aspiration to offer its users something more: a tapestry of feelings, memories, actions, and even lasting positive changes,” says Sarah Mui, Co-founder and Design Director of One Bite Design Studio. “We translate that complex impact into the language of flavours. By connecting flavour with the experience of place, we craft a Flavour Map that encourages visitors to rediscover cities through a multisensory lens.”
The augural exhibition in Hong Kong was a gastronomic crossover with local food creatives for 12 flavours representing the “flavours” our architecture, design and placemaking projects over a decade had brought to the city.
By assigning sensory profiles such as ‘Earthy,’ ‘Fruity,’ and ‘Cheesy’ to our built works, we have created a ‘Flavour Map’ that reveals the impacts different parts of a city have on city dwellers. “These flavours encourage us to rethink the interaction between urban space and people and to improve the modern city lifestyle by asking new questions, such as: "Where can I find an experience that is more citrusy—meaning bright and invigorating?"
The London Experience
Cradled in the popular culinary hub of Borough Market, near the Bankside Design District, the London edition of the Flavour Library awaits you in a historic yet modern space at Borough Yards. In London, the Flavour Library blossoms anew. Departing from the gastronomy theme of its Hong Kong debut, the London edition finds its muse in the city’s iconic floral landscapes.
Your journey begins in our futuristic laboratory. You’ll be invited into the Flavour Cabin, where a curated questionnaire will help you reflect on your personal experience of London. Your reflections will generate a one-of-a-kind Flavour Flower, representing the distinct mix of flavours the city offers you. You'll then receive a personalised flavour note capturing your urban narrative.
Continue your journey to discover creative ways of enhancing your city experience. Here, you can add new, imaginative flavours designed to enliven urban spaces and receive a "care note"—a prompt that invites further exploration and deeper engagement with London. Conclude your visit by watching your Flavour Flower bloom on the City Flavour Map, seeing in real-time how your story transforms the cityscape.
The journey translates the urban experience into the flavours of imaginative, conceptual flowers, guiding visitors to perceive the city from an entirely new perspective.
“Traditional urban analytics tells us where people go, but not how they feel when they get there,” says Alan Cheung, Co-Founder & Managing Director of onebite. “The Flavour Map has the potential to pinpoint areas that inspire joy, instil a sense of safety, or cause anxiety. This psycho-geographic allows us to diagnose experiential voids and design interventions, to build cities that are not only efficient but emotionally resonant and truly human-cantered.”
