Blog 1

Yesterday was 9/2 and we visited the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. First, we toured the Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI) and looked at some of their projects and workspace. Their break room had a ball pit so we jumped in!

After walking around the place, we went into a meeting room and learned about all sorts of TDRI projects, ranging from a Japanese bathhouse-turned-library to courtroom layout designs. This presentation of the work TDRI unexpectedly helped calm my nerves about my career anxieties. I appreciated the insight we got into what sort of work may be done in the industry, and it brought me solace to know that I don’t need to know everything. By that, I mean that it’s nice to know that I can be part of a team like TDRI and not be expected to be part of every project, especially when it does not speak to my interests or expertise. Additionally, it helped further erode the idea that design is divided when it’s truly interdisciplinary and every “subsection” of design melds together. 

Another thing that caught my attention during the TDRI presentation was when the TDRI President was talking about the paradigm shift from “human-centered design” to “humanity-centered design”, which goes by other names such as “non-human-centered design” or (as Professor Dominic puts it) “eco-relational design”. This is a hot topic in design right now and it’s interesting to see how designers tackle these changes. It’s often used as a buzzword, and it made me curious to see how studios and institutions plan to legitimately implement an alternative systems thinking approach to design when we are so comfortable with the somewhat linear design process we’ve been educated to follow. 

Then, we went to the Trash Kitchen, a research space focusing on taking waste and turning it into usable products. They take various types of waste and turn them into sunglasses, portable chargers, and even brushes! There was also a ceramic bowl made of 25% phone screen waste, which was incredible, especially since e-waste is so difficult to handle. A lady who works there showed us how they take parts of trash and use a heat compression machine to create new shapes. She walked us through the process of creating one of their sunglasses and we watched as they went through the steps of measuring the materials, using heat compression, pressing it into a mold, and trimming it. In the end, one of my classmates had their very own upcycled glasses! 

The experience made me reflect on how else we can “undo” the harm we have done to the planet. Reusing trash to create new products is great, but to get to the root of the problem, we would need to perform a whole system overhaul and create a system where there is no trash problem to begin with. It’d be ideal if we could just take the trash currently revolving in our waste system and reuse it to create a circular loop but I fear there is no net benefit if the amount of waste we reuse only offsets the amount of new waste we dump into the system. I still greatly appreciate what Trash Kitchen does, and I hope we can continue pining at this multidisciplinary, global-scaled issue with multidisciplinary, global-scale action.