The Voice of Suzhou
In the Summer of 2008 Tongji University brought together 50 design students from top design schools across the globe. The challenge was layed down to produce urban proposals for an area of central Shanghai. Working in 5 teams of 10 the summer school set out to explore the backstreets and alleys of this Shanghai neighbourhood. We were able to appreciate the beauty in what we found existing on the site.
Team 5 was given the initial theme of ‘advertising’. We were Chiyu Chen (Royal College of Art), Ian Ruaraidh Harrison (University of Dundee), Yiying Lu (University of Technology, Sydney), Lesley McIntyre (University of Dundee), Alice Mela (Politecnico of Turin), Dominik Premauer (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Lobke Rozemarjin (MAHKA Utrecht), Aurora Rapalino (Politecnico of Turin), Yiting Wang (UCLA), Gabriel Wartofsky (Art Centre College of Design), Min Zhang (Tongji University). We came from countries across the world and from disciplines as varied as architecture, industrial design and media arts. We found a shared set of values, approaches and manifestos.
As a group we found a deep appreciation of the place that we had been given to transform and so we reshaped our mission to use techniques taken from advertising (especially guerilla advertising) to give a voice to the place.
The group began this recognition process by finding a name for the community. Fascinated with the number graffiti ads common in the area, we combined both the cultural (Suzhou River Area) and geographical (coordinates of area on a map) identities of this area into one logo.
We then set out to engage with the inhabitants of the place to find ways to bring out the ‘voice of the place’. Applying a synaesthetic process we identified different ways in which communication through advertising media might work and then developed project components to deal with each.
Based on the lessons learned during this process we proposed a new product which could act in the same way to improve communication between designers/decision-makers and inhabitants/ users. Emõtool is a bracelet that allows people to take pictures and record sounds to express their likes and dislikes. An auditory interface questions the decisions of the user to allow the information to be used as a research tool for designers.
The level of excellence in the project was recognised by the 2008 Shanghai Biennalle International Student Exhibition who awarded the Tongji CAUP Summer Camp their top exhibition prize.
Greets! Really amazing. keep working! Tnx! Saw!