Hasta La Ideas

My earliest memories of hutong come from my first visits to China as a child: Pedicab drivers offering tours of Beijing’s arcane labyrinth of largely unmarked alleyways that once demarcated the space between the city’s traditional courtyard houses. Aside from the principle that upper class residences were closer to the city center, the actual construction of the homes—and the incidental passageways between them—was an ad hoc approach to urban planning at best, and subsequent divisions of the houses and land has resulted in a dense network of narrow alleys criss-crossing the enduring swaths of Old Beijing that have not been razed and redeveloped… yet. (Fun fact: Since courtyard houses, or siheyuan, traditionally face south for better natural light, the majority of hutong run from east to west.)

With hundreds of years of history embedded in their crumbling walls, many of these neighborhoods remain jam-packed with longtime residents; despite the fact that the original courtyard houses have been either been modified or left to decay beyond recognition, there is a tendency to romanticize the hutongs as a kind of cultural artifact, authentic both for their historic significance and their current conditions. But how do you preserve a dynamic relic—one that is defined by the fact that it is lived-in? One that, like an organism, is subject to both an internal logic and external factors? As Oliver Wainwright of the Guardian (a fellow member of the media tour for Beijing Design Week) reports:

… in numerous pockets of the old city over the last 10 years, neighbourhoods have been demolished and rebuilt in the name of heritage preservation… areas designated for historic conservation have been transformed into zombie recreations of themselves. Elsewhere, crumbling courtyard houses have been wrapped in neat jackets but their squalid innards left unchanged, adding a flimsy tourist-friendly veneer to give a picturesque backdrop for lucrative hutong tours.

But in Dashilar, things seem to be going in a different direction… the “nodal” Dashilar pilot strategy, developed by local architect Liang Jingyu from 2011, [facilitates] several model projects in strategic locations across the area—and show existing owners how investing in their properties and businesses could help turn a profit and improve the area.

Thus, although Dashilar has been among the major design districts during previous Beijing Design Weeks, the dense neighborhood saw more exhibitions than ever, including a pilot program that showcased works-in-progress from architects and designers examining the neighborhood itself. Here are a few of our favorites:

Hidden behind a faux-ramshackle façade on the Dashilar’s main drag, standardArchitecture‘s “microHutong” was definitely a crowdpleaser, not so much for its ambitious scope but the fact that it was open for exploration. (The highly regarded Beijing-based practice was founded by Zhang Ke in 2001; although it hasn’t been updated since December 2012, the News Feed on their site provides a nice survey of the studio’s recent work.)

The installation itself was something like an inside-out treehouse: human-sized plywood boxes arrayed at varying heights and angles around a kind of micro-courtyard. Compelling? Certainly—children took to it as a veritable playground. Inhabitable? Sure—a studio assistant mentioned that some of his fellow architects (visiting for Beijing Design Week) had indeed spent the night in the cubic chambers when their lodging arrangements fell through. Scalable? Not so much—the team demolished an extant edifice in order to build the structure in situ at the rear of the space and essentially rebuilt an ad hoc façade / gallery afterward (credit where due to the tradesmen who made it happen in a week or so).

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Another example of the intriguing collaborations between young, emerging designers and Austrian industry supported by Vienna Design Week, German designer Sebastian Herkner has developed an ingenious new technique for historic Viennese textile and embrodery merchants Zur Schwäbischen Jungfrau.

A contemporary twist on the family-run company’s age-old monograph napkin embroidery, Sebastian has devised a much more fleeting and flexible way of embellishing the table linen—embossing lettering with a custom-made letterpress set and iron. The crisp yet subtle effect created lingers only until the fabric is washed, leaving room for all sorts of creative communication at your next dinner party.

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Middle class aspirations—of car ownership, of course—notwithstanding, the humble bicycle endures as a touchstone of everyday life in Beijing. Although usage is unlikely to come anywhere near the 2/3-of-trips-by-bicycle mark set in the mid-80’s, the 2012 launch of the city’s bikeshare program and ever-increasing congestion are key factors in bringing pedal power back into fashion in the capital city… and at somewhere between 16–20% usage as of the current decade, they’re easily an order of magnitude beyond, say, NYC. The iconic Flying Pigeon may be a veritable endangered species among the mix of domestically-produced bikes on streets and sidewalks throughout the city, but the bicycle commuter, as a breed, certainly is unlikely to go extinct any time soon.

So too is the curbside repair shop a common sight, at least along the more heavily trafficked bicycle routes in the city center. In the interest of elevating the mundane mechanic, a team of students from CAFA’s Visual Communication program saw fit to elevate the ultralocal repair shop in the heart of Dashilar into a “Museum of Bicycle Parts,” repurposing bits and pieces of hardware into jewelry and toys.

Although there is nothing particularly precious about the upcycled parts—mostly chainlinks, plus nuts and bolts that remain recognizable as such—many of the native Chinese visitors were delighted by the winsome works, and I personally thought that the trinkets and tchotchkes made for more charming souvenirs than the gift items available at Beijing Design Week’s new retail store.

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Isabelle Pascal has supported Beijing Design Week since its inaugural year through her curated design shop Wuhao, which she founded one year prior, in 2010, after relocating from her native France. Located on a quiet alley off the heavily-touristed strip of Nanluoguxiang, the traditional courtyard house is arranged thematically based on the seasons and elements, featuring collections of furniture, jewelry, fashion and other design objects by a mix of local and imported designers.

An art and media manager by trade, Pascal has an excellent eye for young and emerging designers, and her savvy is especially useful in a country with an as-yet-inchoate design scene. We were impressed by the work of CAFA grad Mian Wu, whose debut collection we saw at Wuhao during last Beijing Design Week, and Pascal was pleased to present several new pieces from the young designer. Wu expands upon the theme of jewelry meta-production with rings bedecked with clusters of ‘defective’ rings, which have been cast and painted bone white yet retain their original details.

Of course, Pascal’s main focus for this year’s Beijing Design Week is one of her new finds: the Fabrick Lab, a.k.a. Elaine Ng Yanling, a Chinese-British designer who splits her time between Beijing, London and Hong Kong and whose past experience includes stints at Nokia and Nissan. And although she’s been dubbed the “Techno Fairy” by Elle Decor, her pithy nickname belies the rigor and research behind her craft: she was recently a TED Fellow for smart materials, which take the form of biomimetic textiles.

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This jumprope by student Shi Weilu collects kinetic energy from use to power a flashlight

Ben Hughes has scarcely looked back since he made the transition from Central St. Martins to CAFA about three years ago; rather, he’s looking to the future and what it might possibly hold. What better place to do so than in Beijing, where he’s set up shop in the Caogchangdi artist village and works part time as an instructor at the prestigious China Academy of Fine Arts?

Yet in China, Hughes notes, “design is almost exclusively linked to lifestyle and luxury consumption. It is seen as something to aspire to rather than something accessible by all.” In the interest of initiating a sea change, he’s working on dⁿ Design for the Real China, a design competition that addresses the “imbalance in the understanding of ‘design’ in China—amongst students, amongst consumers, amongst designers.”

With dⁿ – Design for the Real China, I was anxious that we didn’t simply reproduce familiar modes of design competition. Many of these (you know who you are) appear to place image, styling and presentation over content and do not insist on development, prototyping or testing. Many also seem to favour slick exterior computer visuals and don’t require any level of depth. Some (again, you know who you are) seem to exist solely as commercial entities to extract money out of students and young designers, first for entering, then for publishing, then for attending awards ceremonies, then for receiving an award.

Design for the Real China is unique on several levels:

Emphasizing the explanation of the problem being addressed. Competitions that provide briefs are often so limited and so full of assumptions that we wanted to remove that element. Therefore there is no brief, but participants are asked to explain the problem they are tackling. The problem is often as interesting as the solution…

Removing the influence of judges. They often have their own agenda, so the judging is by popular online vote.

Creating a new kind of incentive structure. The categories are not linked to traditional divisions of design activity—graphic design, product design, textiles, fashion, furniture, etc.—but are decided according to the number of people affected by the design.

This is potentially the most confusing part. Since we ask that all entries are prototyped and tested in some way, the category is linked to the number of people who have been affected so far. Therefore, a product that is on the market and has sold well may have affected 10,000 or more people. A prototype that you have shared with your classmates and friends might have affected 50 people. Something that you made for a relative to solve a particular problem might have affected just one person. The prize money is allocated in inverse proportion to this category. i.e. if the design has affected many people, the prize money is low.

This structure allows us to support emerging designs by giving money while at the same time recognising designs that are already successful. In this way, we hope to accommodate and attract entries from established manufacturers as well as people working on their own with limited resources.

Besides the cash incentive, winning entries will receive a warm glow, a physical award, be able to cite our endorsement, be featured on the website, be featured during Salone del Mobile in Milan and Beijing Design Week.

As for the entry itself, we are asking participants to submit a short video explaining both the problem they are addressing and their solution. While this may not be available to everyone, we hope that it extends entry to those outside of the design mainstream.

We hope the competition will attract international entries. While we have China in the title, the competition is bilingual and not limited to Chinese entries. While we are looking to solve problems that exist in China, these problems are usually present elsewhere. It is the perception of design in China that we are trying to change.

I would like to take this chance to encourage any readers of Core77 to spread the word and enter if you have something you think might be suitable. Entry is not limited to unpublished ideas or unproduced ideas. Do not worry if your video skills are not professional, or even if your prototype is not the most beautiful—you can see some examples already on our site, DesignfortheRealChina.com.

Entry is open until the end of October.

Hughes would be happy to respond to questions and comments on our forums, from which this call for entries was adapted.

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