In 2013, I curated the annual design week events of the design college in National Taiwan University of Science and Technology(Taiwn Tech). I led an executive team with over 50 persons. Besides the annual exhibition for selected outstanding student course work, as the elected curator of the year, I would like to curated a special social design exhibition cultivating students' vision and ability to contribute to the society.
After a long discussion, we collaboratively decided that the theme of the year would be "Who Cares about Tomorrow? " This question originated from reflective thinking about the design education of Taiwan Tech. With an esteemed high-quality education, Taiwan Tech facilitates its students with good practical design skills, however, it seldom imposed us any particular problem to solve, namely, “why” to design. This situation motivated us to investigate the reason to design actively, and how design can make a positive societal change.
"Who Cares about Tomorrow? "
"We do!" The answer.
We care about our society. We want to make changes for our tomorrow.
The executive team made an open call for social design proposal among all students studying design in Taiwan Tech. We finally subsidized and exhibited 7 volunteering design projects addressing the existing problems of our society. The design projects comprises a table game design for empathizing urban abandoned pets, a virtual travel design for Taipei's riverside renewal, an eco-friendly design for recycling wood waste from Taiwan's wood processing industry, a critical design for urban's alienated lifestyle, an exhibition design about Taiwanese consuming and waste, a photography exhibition recording LGBT couples in Taiwan, and an installation design concerning the difficulty of the establishment of self-identity.
Furthermore, we organized 5 speeches inviting well-known designers, scholars and activisits sharing their experience and practice to make changes.
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Credits:
Logo Design: Yun-Zhon Chen (TTDW), Yi-Xuan Lu (誰管明天主題展), Hong-Da Jiang (工商業設計系成果展)
Photos: Ya-Han Zhou, Jun-You Liu, Chi-Hua Lin, Li-Wen Ho
Logo Design: Yun-Zhon Chen (TTDW), Yi-Xuan Lu (誰管明天主題展), Hong-Da Jiang (工商業設計系成果展)
Photos: Ya-Han Zhou, Jun-You Liu, Chi-Hua Lin, Li-Wen Ho
