Why Adrian Cheng is in the Design 100

Adrian Cheng founded K11 in Hong Kong in 2008, at a time when shopping malls and art institutions were treated as entirely separate propositions. His idea — folding gallery-grade exhibition space directly into retail floors, a model that became known as cultural retail — has since grown from that first Hong Kong site into Victoria Dockside’s K11 MUSEA and a run of K11-branded developments across mainland China, among them Guangzhou, Shanghai and Wuhan.

Alongside the retail format sits the K11 Art Foundation, which Cheng established in 2010 to support Chinese and Asian contemporary art through commissions and exhibitions rather than acquisition alone. He built both independently of New World Development, the family property business he later ran as chief executive between 2020 and 2024 — worth noting, since K11’s design language is Cheng’s own contribution rather than an extension of the family’s existing portfolio.