First days in Taipei

Two and a half days in Taipei have already broadened my horizons significantly. Everything I have seen so far has been inspiring and working with the students at Shih Chien University has been a great opportunity to see students in a very similar study, but with different perspectives and resources through their program.

The first full day was packed with new experiences, starting with the Taiwan Design Research Institute. Being there and seeing everything they were working on gave me a renewed sense of appreciation for our field of design. Seeing the level of respect they put into not only their own work, but their keeping of historical design and their research was incredible. It really reminded me how special the field we are in is. The Trash Kitchen we went to afterwards, where recycled plastic was upcycled into everything from fabric to sunglasses made me feel even better, as I had a lot of vague ideas of what I would want to do with repurposed trash. I felt the most inspired about materials I’ve felt since the materials and manufacturing class we took in winter quarter. Walking around the rest of the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park where TDRI and the Trash Kitchen were located just continued to provide inspiration and exciting stores just to look at.

Moving straight from that area of new designs and ideas straight into the National Palace Museum, with art dating back thousands of years was certainly a jump. However, it offered an important perspective on design as well, watching developments in design and manufacturing processes through the lens of porcelain and bronze emphasized the value in the craft side of design, which is often overlooked in our heavily CAD-based program at UW, so that was refreshing too.

With all of these different ideas still marinating, we got to meet the students at Shih Chien University for dinner. Over the course of that dinner and our lesson in the morning, I learned a good deal about their program, especially from my group member Zong Chen. I was a little jealous of some of their classes, getting a chance to work with robot arms, metalworking and growing materials out of mushrooms; however, overall it made me see that there were different possibilities besides what we do, which is exciting.

After being assigned our project, we were sent to Taiyuan Road and Dadaocheng to collect materials and inspiration, and the sheer amount of materials was a bit overwhelming, but incredible to pick through. My group was very undecided on our project, but we decided to just pick materials that felt unique and interesting to us and then decide on our direction based on that. I think I could have spent hours there, so the time we had felt very rushed, but we managed to get some interesting materials anyways.

I still have no idea what my group is going to design or make, but I feel like I have learned a lot already from this program and I am so excited for what the rest of the time will hold. Overall, I think I have renewed a lot of passion for industrial design because I am seeing it from a new perspective and seeing a lot of people working on exciting things in the field with a lot of respect for what they do. I want to see how this will translate into the work I do in the following days, but for now I am just ready to keep brainstorming and experiencing the city. Walking around the Shilin and Ningxia night markets, searching out food in different neighborhoods, and taking the train and bus around the city has been just as valuable as the lessons. At first, I was worried about not having enough free time outside of the 9-6 lessons, but there has been no shortage of stuff to do, and it has really been non-stop fun. I really am looking forward to delving into the city more independently on friday.