What is the biggest exhibition piece in your collection?

In this exhibition, the largest piece is Compound by Sopheap Pich. In the M+ Collections as a whole, though, the work Asian Field by Antony Gormley probably requires the largest footprint, consisting of approximately 180,000 individual, hand-sized clay figurines, while the Kiyotomo sushi bar by Shiro Kuramata is considered to be the largest 'object' we've acquired.

How does colonialism come into play in this collection and how did you consider the impact of outside forces who intended to violently, whether through physical violence or cultural violence, erase the identity of many places in the region? Or is there another narrative that arises here?

The subject of colonialism surfaces in the M+ Collections in a variety of ways. In the area of visual art, artists tend to refer to colonial powers or colonial histories indirectly via personal experience or explorations of identity, such as in the Forest series by Simryn Gill.

When it comes to design and architecture, the works we have collected demonstrate multiple effects of colonialism and sometimes it is a bit of a double-edged sword. Works such as the colonial travel posters in the exhibition reveal exploitation of resources and exotic imagery with regards to French Indo–China or the Dutch East Indies; but in other cases, such as the archive of Booty, Edwards & Partners, the materials demonstrate how colonialism played a key role in the development of architecture as a profession, and how British architects contributed to technological and formal experimentation in former British Malaya and Borneo in ways that helped to underscore the identities of place.

When looking at the architecture in the exhibition section Conditions of Place, I was struck by similarities between the elevated walkways of the WOHA design and those used in modern Hong Kong residential high-rises—such as Double Cove in Wu Kai Sha. Did you uncover similar connections as you put together the collection?

It's great that you noticed the similarities. Elevated walkways are common features in high-rise housing today. But they also figured in architectural proposals in the early 1950s, such as those by British architects Alison and Peter Smithson in the form of 'streets in the sky'.

WOHA Architects, however, doubted in the potential of a purely 'elevated walkway' in high-rise housing, as these had often become 'dead space', not used by residents as the architects intended. WOHA's 'elevated walkways'—or what they called 'city conduits' or 'public sky parks' connecting various blocks as multiple ground levels—function as gardens where residents gather; at the same time, their use of planting and 'vertical green screens' generate cooling upwards through the building.

There is quite a diverse range of materials and mediums in the show, e.g. archives, models, moving image, and painting. Can you share with us the approaches in displaying them in the Pavilion?

It was challenging! We decided early on to place the two different types of works—visual artworks and archival materials—in close proximity so as to allow them to be in dialogue with each other and to bring out the shared thematic connections. However, in doing so we also had practical matters to contend with: framed photos and drawings, architecture and design objects that require enclosures, sculptures that are intended to be out in the open, videos that require a darkened room, and so on. These are also very different viewing experiences, so within each section we tended to cluster things of a similar nature together.

For example, in the section 'Conditions of Place', you might notice that most of the framed architecture archival materials and drawings are in alcoves on one side of the room, with video works and sculptures sitting opposite. This is largely due to how works on paper can only be exposed to lower lighting. But still we tried to put them in the same space with the artworks so as to communicate the idea of how artists, architects and designers address the specificities of where they are.

Generally, we've chosen a narrative-based approach so as to allow for multiple readings of a particular place or issue. A moving image work such as Riau by Zai Kuning, for example, was deliberately placed in the beginning of ‘Conditions of Place’ because it could speak to both the subjective nature of visual art works while at the same time setting the topographical and climatic context of Southeast Asia, i.e. the tropics, which is a crucial part of how architects approach their design.