A Tube Chair + A Road Trip

Navigating the cultural hackathon in a short period of time while still exploring more of the surrounding area of Taipei was a bit stressful, but was a rewarding experience in the end. Yingge was such a cool experience, even though we ran out of time for the old street with the pottery shops. Jessy and I both decided to just follow around Kayla at the museum because she’s a bit of a ceramics fanatic, so she was able to give us a lot of interesting facts on all the different types of glazes, kiln processes and types of clay. I was amazed at all the different types of glaze and the way modern artists had kept up the ancient traditions but pushed it even further aesthetically. I had all of that in my mind when we went to the pottery factory afterwards, and got a little bit over excited making my cup and saucer, so I had to rush it in the end in order to get it finished. It didn’t turn out quite as perfectly as I had hoped, but it was very fun to do and made me appreciate how impressive the intricate work done by the artists and craftsmen at that factory was when we did our tour. The level of detail in all of their work was truly next level and kind of mind-blowing to process that it was all done by hand. In our design world where everything is 3D modeled and we do so much 3D printing or laser cutting or CNC work, it’s a bit insane to see painting and craftsmanship on that level of intricacy and perfection that is all done by hand. 

We made a brief stop at Dot Design after Yingge, and it was really inspiring to see all of the different ways they worked with recycled materials and still produced clean and beautiful commercial products. I was really impressed by the cat packaging designs and the chairs. The furniture was so playful, but a very effective way to reuse such a significant amount of plastic. It definitely gave me a lot of ideas for how to approach the workshop assignment.

After that fun distraction from the project at hand, it was time to get back to work, and my group was quite stressed. We had our materials: a dense rubber tile, two types of tubing, netting, and a block of foam. We felt rushed to pick a direction, so we got very stuck on this idea of a lamp that represented the transition from ancient to modern and their continued relationship by making the tubing form a traditional lantern shape and then unravel into neon light tubing at the bottom. However, the logistics were very difficult in the time frame, two other groups were making lights, and we felt stuck and uninspired. We had no ideas and decided to run and get dinner, some delicious malatang nearby that Zong, our SCU partner, frequents. Reinvigorated, we came back to the studio and had the idea to construct a chair with the tubing using traditional methods for bamboo and rattan. We made rough sketches and a plan, but had to leave the studio at 10 and put a break on it until the morning. 

In the 4 hours we had to prototype, make final sketches, take photos, and make a presentation, I had low expectations of fidelity, but it ended up coming out a lot cleaner than I expected. I am quite proud of the project, and my group was very fun and effective to work with, I am going to miss being at Shi Chien. We all went out to have an incredible dinner afterwards (thank you Meichun), and then most of us went out to bars and clubs for a full celebration, which was very fun.

On our day off, Kalin, Jessy and I got a tour with Kalin’s Taiwanese friend Kevin from UW. We had no idea where he was taking us most of the time, so we ended up having quite a surprise road trip. The first stop was Keelung city up north, where we got an oyster omelet and visited a nearby temple, where Kevin explained some of the symbolism of the dragons and local deities, which has explained a lot every time I see a temple now. After that, we drove through some incredibly winding roads to reach Jiufen up in the mountains, where we walked for a while and Kevin had us try some tasty snacks from vendors before heading back to the car. We then went on to Shifen waterfall, which was beautiful. After that, we went to Pingxi to light a lantern for wishes before heading back to Taipei. Our final part of the day was walking through the Raohe night market and getting an insane amount of food. We had pepper buns, tendon, steamed buns with pork and peanut, tea, lemon melon drink, sausage, potato and taro balls, and a rice and sesame or peanut dessert. It was definitely the best night market I have had so far, and the tendons were definitely my favorite. 

I had an incredible time in Taipei, and learned so much in such a short time, so I am sad to leave, but excited for new experiences in Tainan.