Contents Product Carpet / Tent
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Haunt
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2D => 3D
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Prosthetics
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Induction Hob for Blind
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Flower Power
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Salad!
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Quantum Travel (Card Game)
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Installation Golden Intrusion
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The Five Senses
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Sketch Speed Form
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Design Expression
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Sketch
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2013.04 - 2013.05
Carpet / Tent
How can a carpet become a tent? Carpet/Tent = Carpent
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I was very interested in people's sense of security and child psychology. When I was six years old, I used whatever I could lay my hands on – umbrella,
decided to use felt. At the beginning I can’t find the right felt, they were either too soft or too thick. So I bought lots of
table, bamboo mat – to build a small kingdom in my bedroom. What if I can design something unobtrusive and practical, and can turn into a playhouse when needed? I always want a carpet in my own room, but my parents never allow me one – ‘too much trouble to keep it clean,’ they said. Now I am not only making a carpet of my own, I also want it to fulfill another childish desire of mine: a playhouse! To make a carpet that can fold into a self-standing structure without support, the material had to be light, soft to touch but strong enough to stand by itself. After much thought and consideration, I
small felt pads from IKEA. They were strong enough to stand up, the right weight and thickness to be carried around, even after being sewed together into a 2100*1900 piece.
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The ‘Carpent’ was completely sewed by an old sewing machine within 3 days. Thanks for the enthusiastic seamstress who were very keen on making it work, no matter how bizarre this 2100*1900 mm 'thing' is on her small machine. We have to work in a parking lot, because the 'Carpent' were so big that we can hardly fit it into her small workshop. We used more than 100 of felt pad, 16 zip fasteners, 16 set of Velcro and 116 elastic bands.
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Childhood fantasies were finally fulfilled.
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2012.11-2012.12
Haunt
Lamp of horror Once apon a time, I was going though this kind of "fascinated by gothic culture and psychiatry" phrase. I dived myself into gothic literatures, movies, music etc., and read materials of psychology categories, because there are many case analysis that easily tops horror novels. In this project, the lamp is the story teller.
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I was inspired by the book called The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks. This is a story about a girl who suffers from delusions and hallucinations. She tried hard to fight with the demon who bears the same face with her at the beginning, after years of hide and seek, she finally made peace with this private companion.
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I made several plaster cast of my own face for experiments. Later I finally made two successful silicone molds to produce the face shape lamp.
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2012.12 - 2013.02
2D => 3D from Vonoroi diagram to ( ) Built using traditional wood bending technique.
This project was a teamwork project, instructed by Ming K Leung, London-based product designer and visiting professor in CAFA. In this project, we were going to build the frame for a vertical garden within the size of 1700*2100*700mm, everyone take charge of one block of space and put their plants in it. Prof. Leung chose my design for the overall sttucture design, so I am the leader for this project. I want to try out a new form, that we have never try or see before.
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The structure was to be designed according to the Voronoi diagram. I don't want it look chunky like bookshelves, or any shape too regular. so I used 7 tube (with thin wire inside) for the first model, and later stuffed plastic foam in it to indicate the original shape from Vonoroi diagram.
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Cane is a traditional furniture material in sauthern Asia. It's environmentally-friendly, light, longlasting, and can be easily shaped. Cane bending is exactly as wood bending, but without customed mold, it's hard to guarantees accurate curves that can be assemble together later. We hand-adjusted every single pieces with steam and cooling air brush.
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Step by step, our group and I witnessed my small 20*20*8cm model blown up into a shoulder-height structure. Experimenting with materials and steam-bending technics were ton of fun in the making process. This project was also the first team work project in the third year. Our group were more united, and have generate better understanding and cooperation with each other.
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2013.12 - 2014.02
Prosthetics Embrace difference
Inspired by American amputee athlete Aimee Mullins, I gathered my courage and beginned my research on
body builder, favourite hobby is driving his huge Motorcycle on high speed.
an umfamiliar user group: amputee. I started with Beijing Disabled Persons' Federation and Chaoyang Rehabilitation Center, at the same time I befriended with a very friendly Amputee Tom (alias) who gone though above-knee Amputation in 2011. Fro m what I discovere d a n d witn es se d d urin g re s e a rch, th e liveli h o o d situati o n of d is a b l e d population in china makes me feels ver y angr y and bitter: Accessibility, Social Acceptence, Job Perspective, and Education are "non-existant to low". The serious problem is: people easily ignore the existence of 14 million amputee populations and not trying to make an effort. People without limbs would be easily considered incompetent, ugly and sick, an outcast. Large number of them stay indoors their whole life, because outside world is way too difficult and unfriendly. But there are always people who won't give in to the unfair treatment from the society: Tom is rocking his life with one leg. He is a Welder and off-time
I want to help more people to accept themselves and walk accross that threshold. Most of the leg amputees choose wheelchair over prosthetic due to the difficult prosthetic fitting training, and "prosthetics are never as good as a real one". I wish an aesthetic-focused design can attract and encourage more people to choose prosthetic, and stand up with their own strength. Prosthetic design is far more difficult than I expected. It's a highly customized product that required lots of adjustment for adaptation to the body. I still have so many things to learn about prosthetics. Although the projec t didn't finish inside the curriculum, I still want to continue my research and develop truly wearable prototypes in the near future.
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2015.03 - 2015.07
Induction Hob for Blind People How to cook with seeing, safe and easily? Since the prosthetic project I had always paying attention to all sort of daily problems that would accured to disabled people. I believe one important reponsibility of designer is to help and encouraging others to be more engage with different activities. Visually impaired / blind people have great trouble to do simple tasks that we never consider as problems, so that's where I want to get started.
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In order to study the natural behavior of blind people, I joined Beijing Hongdandan Education & Culture Exchange Center as volunteer photographer for two month. Hongdandan provide reading seminar and braille training, and hold outings for visually impaired, blind people, and sighted volunteers. Because of the horrible accessibilty design in Beijing, most of the visually impaired people prefered staying home and wait for sighted guide then go out by themselves. This result in many blind people seldom visit parks or natures in a year. It was incredibly moving to see how they react to the sound of flowing river, softness of newly blossom flower petal, like greeting an old friend.
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Soon I found the most ideal research subject a designer can hope for: Mrs. Han Chunling. She is completely blind, but that doesn't stop her from running a massage center with 5 staffs (4 of them are also visually impaired) that major costumers are employees of foreign embassies. She had visited Europe and south Asia and befriended with people all around the world. She visited Louvre, because She want to "see" those great Skulptures in original. She proudly showed me her painting collection, and described to me, a sighted person, what's on the paintings and how beautiful they are. Her favourite is The Birthday by Marc Chagall. She is so interesting I can write a book just about her! I jokingly made a skill-trading deal with this wonderfull lady: I teach her English, and she teach and shows me how to live a daily life without seeing.
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I went to shopping and work with her, had lunch and english class with her for about 2 weeks. When I started to make prototypes, she was also there to correct me, when I made assumptions as a sighted person. She showed me how she normally cooks, so I can take notes of her cooking habit and take it into my design. We had worked together from beginning to the end of my project. Before my final model went into exhibition in school, I carried it to her place so she can have "first-hand experience". It was the greatest feeling ever to see her having so much fun with my model.
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The final design is an induction hob with only the important function and safety figures. I didn't use any braille element because it's not as useful as we sighted people thinks, and many blinded people didn't learn braille at all. The Induction hob have 3 removable megnetic blocks, and 1 flippable block (by pushing the fish pan button) to help locating pots and pans, two wheels and confirm button for heat control, timer, and one children safety button.
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2013.10 - 2014.01
Flower Power
Do not fade, do not wither, do not grow old.
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This project was required to use ready-mades to design a set of furniture. I want to use artificial flowers as the main material to create the "teenage-girlyfeel" inspired by a Japanese manga magazine called 'Flowers and Dreams'. Artificial flowers normally are felt to be ‘fake’ and ‘shallow’. On the contrary, artificial flowers never grow old, always perfect, blossoming and naive.
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Salad! Salad variations with same amount of calories for a healthy and enjoyable diet 2013.09 -2013.10
In China, raw vegetables are not normal dish for dinners. But as the western culture are widely welcomed and populared, I see a promising market here for good quality salad restaurants. My design restaurant named“ 蔬· 淑· 舒 ”, which all three characters pronounces "shu", but have three different meaning: "Vegetables, Gentleness and Comfortable". This restaurant provides fifteen defferent kind of salad dishes representing ten positive attitudes of living, aiming to encourage people keep a healthy diet by getting a light, healthy bowl of greens everyday. Every dishes calorie levels were carefully calculated to ensure accuracy.
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1. Traditional Italian Salad 2. Mushroom Ham Spinach Salad with Cherry Tomatoes
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1. Mixed Vegetable with Goat cheese Salad 2. Prosciutto e melone with Salad
‘Colorful’ ‘Brave’
3. Homey Fruits Salad 4. Sardine with Sweet Pepper Salad 5. Chicken Breast Salad 6. Macaroni with Sweet Peas Salad 7. Sweet Pea, Corn, Carrots with Pinenut Kernel Salad
‘Family’ ‘Passion’ ‘Gentle’ ‘Heart of a child’ ‘Color!'
‘Youth’ ‘Sharing’
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Quantum Travel Reimagine space connection 2014.04 - 2014.05 Quantom Travel is a card game, inspired by the chaotic routing from the movie Lola Rennt. It was proven that the routes Lola ran past are impossible in reality, so we simply blamed ever y thing on quantum theories. Every card have two drawing in different colors representing real locations within San Litun area, Beijing.
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Golden Intrusion Can we create a golden river flowing above our head? 2014.02 - 2014.04
The project was to build a model of a 3000*3000 garden or public space. I choose the courtyard inside building No.5 in CAFA. It’s a space connected the entrance of our school though the Building, to the square in the back. Building No.5 is for Fine Arts department and School of Humanities. I want to build a sparkling golden structure to express their artistic creativity flows in the air of this area. To build a gigantic installation in this small space, making connection between the building and the courtyard, to shade people from direct lights, and create a new space for social events, a possible spot for parties.
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2014.04 - 2014.06
The Five Senses "Davy Jones of the Flying Dutchman"
This Installation was designed to express the worry of the negative effect of overflowing information and stimulation for our senses. Final model was about 45 kg, 800*400*3000mm.
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Speed Form Linear, Organic, and Speed Sh o r t term trainin g fo r t wo-an d-a-half we ek, instructed by Ed Wong, a former General Motors Corp. (GM) designer. We draw countless sketches of linear and organic speed form day and night, sketching forms out of instinct. It’s was an enjoyable and relaxed experience.
Design Expression
Sketch
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