Shiu-Kay Kan

Shiu-Kay Kan (Hong Kong, 1949 ) is a British architect, industrial designer, and lighting designer. After making a successful start as an architect in the 1980s he turned his attention to designing lights. He has sold his design to some clients (e.g. House of Fraser, Habitat or IKEA).

Biography Shiu-Kay was born in Hong-Kong, before moving to Edinburgh and studied at Telford College of Arts and Technology. In 1969 he went to the Polytechnic of Central London (now University of Westminster) to study architecture. In 1974 he wrote his thesis paper on building architecture out of waste, and in 1976 he received his RIBA qualification.

In 1983, he won the Philips lighting award on PL lamps.

Work After making a successful start as an architect, Shiu-Kay turned his attention to designing lights. In the 1980s, he has designed a new generation of paper lanterns, which vary from the original globe shapes originally introduced by Isamu Noguchi in the 1950s. His designs are made of tissue paper and some of silk, whereas the originals are made of rice paper.

Garbage architecture In the 1970s, Kan went to study garbage architecture at the Architectural Association, in Bedford Square, London, under Martin Pawley and subsequently won a scholarship to go to a seminar at the Tallahassee University in Florida, USA.

The garbage architectural design of a conservatory built of secondary wastes of tin cans, cardboard and Watney beer crates, caused a lot of attention from the press and Shiu-Kay appeared on Blue Peter, presented by John Noakes and Percy Thrower.

Lighting design In Milan, Kan became heavily influenced by the style of Milanese and developed a strong interest in the designer lighting company. His first design was the "Kite Light" which he designed while working with Mark Sutton Vane. This proved to be a very successful design and was sold to the Conran Shop, which motivated Shiu-Kay on to take up lighting design full-time.