Highlights from Taiwan Design Week’s second version

Final month, Taiwan marked a sequence of notable design milestones, reaffirming its ongoing dedication to nurturing and showcasing the inventive industries on each native and international levels. Organised by the Taiwan Design Analysis Institute (TDRI), the second version of Taiwan Design Week happened at its headquarters within the Songshan Cultural and Inventive Park, in December 2024, drawing 250,000 guests.

One of many two flagship exhibitions, ‘The Gateway’ featured 34 native and worldwide members, exploring modern synthetic intelligence functions in design to handle societal challenges. So far, Taiwan stays a dominant power in semiconductor manufacturing, producing over 90 per cent of the world’s modern logic chips and two-thirds of AI servers. The area is now increasing its affect in AI software program and functions, selling systematic progress via initiatives just like the AI Taiwan Motion Plan, which ensures moral AI improvement. A regulatory framework for AI governance can also be beneath improvement, which features a risk-based strategy and accountability mechanisms for AI functions.

The highlights from Taiwan Design Week’s second version

Curated by Tsung-Yen Hsieh, assistant professor on the Division of Structure at Tunghai College, the exhibition focuses on three key features: manufacturing, experimentation, and inspiration. ‘AI will not be a flawless superpower; it wants our feelings and creativity to drive it. People have the liberty to make errors and experiment, and that’s the basis of design,’ Hsieh says.

‘Venture Patching’ by Dimension Plus, a brand new media artwork collective primarily based in Taipei and Hong Kong, addresses AI bias by selling various and consultant databases via collaborative participation from varied areas. By accumulating knowledge from totally different cultural, geographical, and socio-economic backgrounds, the initiative goals to coach generative fashions that allow AI techniques to higher perceive and reply to cultural variety and inclusivity.

Po-Ching Chou’s kinetic sculpture ‘Infinite Panorama’ blends gentle, movement, and mechanical dynamics to create a visible efficiency. By way of generative design and AI instruments, the art work produces outcomes primarily based on mathematical patterns, reflecting our understanding of goal information and their position in shaping collective consciousness in an immersive expertise.

A venture by Leotek, the ‘Eco-ridge Ecological Lighting’, is the world’s first lighting know-how designed from a organic perspective, decreasing blue gentle to beneath 2 per cent to minimise its affect on ecosystems. Utilized in conservation initiatives like turtle safety in Lanyu and firefly conservation in Matsu, it ensures visible consolation and street security whereas defending wildlife.

Open-sourced for designers, TDRI has launched seven AI-driven design instruments, together with the Product Knowledge Explorer, which provides over 300,000 product listings and knowledge factors from home and worldwide e-commerce platforms, together with a couple of million person knowledge entries and counting.

‘Constructing on final yr’s theme, “Elastic Bridging”, which highlighted Taiwan’s flexibility and adaptableness within the inventive business – traits significantly evident throughout the pandemic – we’re much less constrained by custom or scale, enabling us to reply rapidly to speedy adjustments, and we’re agile in approaching challenges with proactive ambition. Shifting ahead, design ought to seize this second to embrace the unknown, boldly experimenting and exploring new potentialities throughout disciplines in response to the alternatives and challenges introduced by AI,’ president of TDRI Chi-Yi Chang notes.

‘The Golden Pin Design Award Exhibition’ (on present till 6 April 2025) showcased 200 initiatives from 12 nations and areas. A collective route was evident amongst native communicators, designers, and designers, who’re dedicating their work to designs that enhance the wellbeing of their communities and improve each the constructed and pure environments, all whereas advancing know-how in a sustainable and regenerative method.

The Greatest Spatial Design (Non permanent Constructing) award went to ‘Bridge Cocoon’ by Forest-Wooden Archi-Tect. The studio used bamboo structure to create a poetic lakeside construction. Crafted utilizing the steam-bending method, the arches had been coated with waterproof, weather-resistant paint, giving them a translucent texture and providing pedestrians a cocoon-breaking expertise as they cross the bridge.

One other award-winning venture in the identical class was ‘Reclaimed Archeoscape’ by Atelier Very good, an outside set up set in a wheat area. The venture reworked reclaimed constructing scraps into an oblong construction, exploring how supplies, over time, embody the essence of human life and reminiscence, reflecting the marks of city improvement and nature’s decline, with textures that outline the house.

Morpho Design’s ‘Taipei MRT Zhongshan Station Redesign’ received the Greatest Integration Design (City Planning) award. The brand new spatial idea optimises the station’s companies and gear, enhancing the person expertise for the reason that system’s launch 27 years in the past. Providers are organised round a central data hub inside a ‘boxed’ house, that includes low-maintenance facilities together with trash bins, charging stations, bulletin boards, brochure racks, and umbrella stands, all designed by native model Naknak, with IF Workplace advancing the graphic data system.

The Greatest Communication Design (Model Identification) award recognised Adj All the pieces’s visible identification for ‘New Taipei Manufacturing @®©’, an exhibition on the New Taipei Metropolis Artwork Museum in late 2023. Curated by DHH Studio and Hu Design, the exhibition highlighted town’s legacy as an industrial hub and its evolving position within the period of sensible manufacturing. Targeted on ‘Progressive Craftsmanship’, it showcased how a brand new era of craftsmen is shaping town’s future. The symbols ‘@®©’ signify originality, outstanding achievements, and authorship.

Alongside related traces, TDRI launched the ‘T22’ revitalisation programme in 2020, addressing native challenges with tailor-made methods. In collaboration with Yingge, a ceramics city close to Taipei, the programme tackles points reminiscent of expertise drain, financial decline, and stagnation via industrial transformation. Its flagship initiative, ‘Open Manufacturing unit’, reorganised and opened manufacturing areas to introduce knowledge-based tourism. Town is at the moment internet hosting the Taiwan Ceramics Biennale, that includes works by native and worldwide artists that discover up to date ceramic artwork and improvements.