Rare, architecturally significant industrial buildings and homes dating as far back as the late 1860s are sprinkled around Dogpatch, a once gritty neighborhood populated by shipyard workers until its stylish resurrection around the turn of our current century. Especially impressive, the hundred year old cannery revitalized as the American Industrial Center stretches along 3rd Street from 20th to 23rd Street, and houses not only our favorite S.F. chocolatier Nosh This but also the kaleidoscopic climbing wall at Dogpatch Boulders to work off that decadent Bacon Crack. Elsewhere in this behemoth, the Museum of Craft and Design is free the first Tuesday of every month. We keep art smart by continuing on to the three warehouses revived nearby as Minnesota Street Project, with its 35,000 square feet of gallery space. The contemporary art and home design is good to go at Workshop Residence. A recent arrival housed in an Instagram-ready industrial space, Smokestack has already endeared itself as a one-of-a-kind micro-beer-pub meets BBQ joint cum whiskey bar. Do not, and we really mean this, leave Dogpatch without queuing up at Mr. and Mrs. Miscellaneous where two former pastry chefs whip up unexpected licks like black sesame, burnt sugar and sloe gin made with real gin, fresh berries and lemon zest.

 

On the other side of ritzy Potrero Hill, the Mission District houses some of this city’s most contemporary and exciting street art within its oldest neighborhood. A veritable urban gallery of effervescent, ever-changing murals festooned on countless walls and fences, the Mission should be viewed on foot. Everything we at G know about San Fran street art in the Mission and beyond we owe to the long-time experts at the inner-city non-profit Precita Eyes which offers self-guided and guided tours of the Mission’s most wonderful walls. Rev up for the art trek or wind down after at Trick Dog, a cocktail mecca that supports mural artistry around the city. We say keep an eye out for the smile-inducing cartoonish works of Simon Norris whose three garage doors at 20^th Street and Dolores are worth seeking out. Murals first appeared in the Mission on Balmy Alley as political protests in the 1980s and the narrow strip has evolved into S.F.’s most concentrated assortment of murals. One mile north and just off Mission Street, the grassroots community-based Clarion Alley Mural Project shows off the fruits of its 25-year long collective effort to give visual voice to this city’s social consciousness.

After a stint working for his father, Pun struck out on his own with Pun Projects in 2013. Their first venture transformed a rundown warehouse on Yangon’s desolate riverfront into TS1, which Pun calls “a pop-up space for contemporary arts in a transitioning city.”

International media focused on Pun’s photogenic coterie of foreign friends who rocked up at TS1 to sip Champagne while ogling catwalk labels the likes of which Myanmar had never seen including Prabal Gurung and 3.1 Phillip Lim. What they failed to capture was Pun’s dedication to engage and educate the local community. Rotating exhibitions of cutting edge art from Burma and beyond included artist-led workshops for local children. Yangon’s soaring rents may have left Pun sorting out a permanent space for TSI yet its mission continues, with plans to bring the Dhaka Art Summit to Yangon next March in collaboration with Para Site, a groundbreaking artist-run collective in Hong Kong.

Along with the unprecedented exposure that TS1 offered Pun’s local contemporaries who grew up largely cut off from foreign cultural influences, the multifaceted venture served as an incubator for Pun to tap into the country’s rich artisanal traditions. Custom textiles and homewares were showcased under the label Myanmar Made. The Pun Project’s team scoured the country, collecting Shan State textiles and Chindwin water jugs from its remote extremes. Out of this grew Pun’s interest to put a 21st-century spin on the concept of “made in Myanmar” by showing architects and interior designers especially what this country in transition could produce. Eighteen months ago, Pun launched Paribawga which means ‘furniture’ in Burmese. Employing sixty local carpenters and artisans, the nascent brand produces contemporary pieces that subtly reference their geographic origins while taking advantage of the country’s trove of sustainable timber and rattan.

TS1’s remote waterfront location meanwhile inspired Port Autonomy, which Pun calls a “cool hipster restaurant like you’d find in Brooklyn” serving an inspired mish-mash of Korean, Mexican and Burmese cooking. Out of that strategic necessity to feed TS1 visitors, Pun began to engage Yangon’s palates, and along the way, he has helped revitalize the city’s colonial downtown where The Strand Yangon by Hotel G is located.

Among Pun Projects six diverse Yangon eateries currently in operation, Pun has a special place in his heart for the retro-chic ambience and updated Indochine cuisine at Rau Ram in Pazundaung. He is equally enthusiastic about Locale, which opened earlier this summer. Calling the California inspired menu of freshly squeezed juices, homemade granola, brown rice and quinoa bowls, and leafy salads  “clean eating,” Pun is quick to explain that true farm-to-table is not yet realistic in Myanmar. However, like many other upcoming ventures for Pun Projects, it sounds like he’s already working on it.

First, a short history, since that is all Shenzhen really has.  Proximity to the financial resources and international expertise across the border in Hong Kong encouraged People’s Republic of China leader Deng Xiaoping to select Shenzhen in 1979 as the PRC’s first Special Economic Zone. Less than forty years later this Communist Party experiment with market reforms evolved into one of China’s largest and wealthiest cities. Along with rising up as China’s electronics manufacturing hub, Shenzhen proved worthy of recognition as one of UNESCO Cities of Design in 2008, two years before Shanghai was nominated to that same list. Who knew?

Last year, London’s prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum announced plans to partner with a subsidiary of the state-owned China Merchants Group to launch Design Society this October in Shenzhen’s Shekou district. Designed by the firm of Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Fumihiko Maki, the futuristic waterfront structure of cantilevered volumes atop a deconstructed plinth is the V&A’s first physical presence in China and will showcase design as manifest across fashion, photography, furniture, graphic design and live performance. The cutting edge centre also plans to document Shenzhen’s on-going cultural evolution. This exciting new design mecca is located mere minutes from our own Residence G Shenzhen with its 48 hotel and 130 minimalist chic apartments, from studios, 1-bedroom to 3-bedroom apartments.

While the Design Society will surely boost the city’s reputation in the most sophisticated global circles, it is young local artists and performers fuelling much of the excitement on the ground here. A sprawling neighbourhood of former factories, OCT Loft is home to Shenzhen’s hippest cafes, art galleries and nightlife. Hear live jazz at Penny Black Jazz Bar, and head to Rosebank for Shenzhen’s sexiest whiskey cocktails. The epi-centre of this dynamic young scene is the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, or OCAT, which comprises galleries, artists’ studios, outdoor sculptural installations and an extensive art library known for its hard-to-find Asian contemporary art resources.

Nearby, the He Xiangning Art Museum mounts an annual Cross-Straits exhibition of living artists from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macao and the mainland to encourage a vibrant dialogue across this region despite political differences. Where watchful central government eyes focus on Beijing and Shanghai, central authorities exert much less influence over local affairs in faraway places like Shenzhen, which allows such collaborative exchanges and self-expression to flourish. Contemporary art has filtered even to Shenzhen’s furthest extremes. Around 50 artists including sculptors, potters, painters, musicians and writers live and exhibit in New Who Art Village, one of Shenzhen’s last remaining Hakka villages.

Curious about this island at the confluence of the Chao Phraya, Pa Sak and Lopburi Rivers, we decide to make the two hour nautical journey north up the Chao Praya ‘River of Kings’ from Bangkok and back in time, past the shimmering magnificence of Bangkok’s Grand Palace and stark beauty of Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn, as gleaming skyscrapers give way to luxuriant mangroves and stilted wood houses above the muddy river.

This pastoral setting belies the grandeur that was Ayutthaya back when its geographic position between China, India and the Malay Archipelago made this an important hub for East-West trade. Ambassadors from the French Court at Versailles and the Mughal Court in Delhi made their way to Ayutthaya’s three palaces and four hundred gilded temples. Thirty-three kings from five dynasties held court from Ayutthaya between the 14th to the 18th century, before defeat by the invading Burmese Army in 1767, a date that still evokes emotions among patriotic Thais.

A word of warning about what to expect at this sleepy time warp comes from Dr. Christophe Pottier, the Director of the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme-Orient Centre Bangkok: “What people can see now is only the scale of the once vast city” yet even in the archaeological ruins, artful clues speak to that rich past, a smattering of mural paintings depicting Ayutthaya court life and at the 14th century Khmer influenced Wat Mahathat, a serene stone Buddha head cossetted by the roots of a holy Bodhi tree.

A recently launched collection of one-of-a-kind sweaters plus scarves and hats, Knotti Knits are handmade in Hong Kong of biodegradable wool yarn under the design guidance of Denise Ho, this city’s top stylist. Best friends Hilary Tsui Ho-ying and Dorothy Hui keep the inventory of their three Liger boutiques staunchly independent by actively supporting local talent on the cusp like Jourden and Johanna Ho. To shop more of Hong Kong’s nascent design talents, try PMQ. The colonial Police Married Quarters originally built in 1951 is now home to Ivan Keung’s octopus tentacles and broccoli crowns sculpted as silver jewelry at 794729metalwork.com and Blksheepempire for their not-so sensible women’s flats.

Carolyn Kan worked in advertising before taking up silversmithing on an Italian holiday, and one year later won a Singapore jewelry designer of the year award for her lighthearted gold and silver pieces. See how she turns humble objects like a safety pin into bling things at the Carrie K. Atelier inside the National Design Centre. Easy to wear, loose-fitting pieces for men and women at In Good Company are made for Singapore’s tropical context yet light as a feather, they are good to go anywhere. Max.Tan takes the notion of “straight-laced Singapore” far out of the box with his well priced, catwalk ready frocks.

 

Any young fashionista in the Thai capital knows Disaya ready-to-wear by Central Saint Martin’s grad Disaya Sorakraikitikul. Her frilly blouses and flirty dresses are favorites of international celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Kelly Osborne. Designers at Something Boudoir think of their outrageously playful creations as “wearable candy” and understandably so with its stylishly dizzy prints and amusing accessories. Two long-time Thailand residents, sisters Anthea and Xenia Viragh are millennials cool enough to work with their mother on Vitalexi, a newly launched line of urbanized espadrilles. Especially popular are the unisex velvet versions, named for popular Thai destinations like Pattaya and Yaowarat.

Born in Myanmar and raised in the United States, men and women’s knitwear designer Steven Oo dresses the likes of Taylor Swift and still found time to open a shop in Yangon soon after the embargo was lifted. While the country is still in its fashion infancy, ones to watch include Vestige, an ethically made-in-Myanmar lifestyle brand helmed by a Parisian designer and the quirky accessories from Yangoods which draws chic inspiration from everyday life in Myanmar.