Biography
Born in Hong Kong, settled in Canada with his parents at age 14, Kitmen spent a decade living in Vancouver where he completed high school and undergraduate art education. In 2003, moved to Milan, under supervision of Italian designer Stefano Giovannoni and American architect Hani Rashid he received his Master of Design from Domus Academy. Throughout his stay in Italy, he had the opportunity to work with international brands such as Artemide, Ermenegildo Zegna, Oregon Scientific, Mitsubishi and Gas etc. For him, design is truly scientific, yet it captures the essence of science in an interactive way and brings out the sympathetic, emotional perceptions in people. He believes tradition is modernity, and simple, functional form is the spirituality that reveals itself when the superfluous is removed so that object design again becomes an elegant form of interaction. He was selected as one of the Four Hong Kong Emerging Designers by Elle Deco Magazine in 2008, received the annual Art Directors Club Young Guns Award in New York in 2009 and named one of the 36 most essential Young Designers in Asia by Korean monthly magazine Designnet in 2010.