The city of Harbin, in frigid northeastern China,is hosting its 26th annual International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. See more photos at http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/harbin_ice_and_snow_sculpture.html

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A green phone for Nokia, desgner Daizi Zheng

From her website:

This is the client project for designing an eco friendly phone for Nokia. Through my research, I found that phone battery as a power source, it is expensive, consuming valuable resources on manufacturing, presenting a disposal problem and harmful to the environment. The concept is using bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment. Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out. Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable. Meanwhile, it brings a whole new perception to batteries and afternoon tea.

www.daizizheng.com

Published shortly after the opening of the China Design Now exhibition, a stunning series of images by photographer Lu Guang, documenting effects of industrial pollution in smaller Chinese towns.

In a discussion of creativity in China, these raise two valuable questions: First, to what extent does the new affluence that enables such creativity demand this level of environmental sacrifice? And second, can the application of artistry such as Guang's have a real impact on the behaviors of industries and governmental agencies that could alter this path?

Interview with Lu Guang on China Hush.

Larger format versions the 40 photo series on fengniao.com.

From Zhili Liu:

"This is Zhili Liu, a product and furniture designer based in Shanghai.

Above are 2 projects I did in my leisure time(shown at 100%design Shanghai,
now working with European brands to launch those at Salone in April), if I
may, I d like to share some of my thoughts about Chinese design to explain
the concept behind. Generally I think the traditional patterns and motifs'
exploration should not be the major way for us to go. Along with many other
things, most of the traditional visual elements were dead, sadly, in the
colonial times, in the wars, and in the cultural revolution and economic
boomings these years, most patterns we dig up from ancient books are strange to us as well as they are to the westerners. But some of the traditional
standards and values are still here, surviving under the whole globalization
thing. So my preference has been exploring the current social phenomenon and try to start design with a "why" rather than a traditional visual style or
pattern. And in the end design results, if I could, I always like to
achieve some kind of poetic sense of "Chineseness" that still look and sound
familiar to contemporary Chinese people.

Bird lamps
The most common(and regarded boring)"10 RMB pendant lamp" with an angle.
http://www.dezeen.com/2009/11/10/bird-by-zhili-liu/

Shrub tables
use the basic materials and low quality tooling that Chinese manufacturing
is famous for to creats high-specification products through unusual but
practical design.
http://www.dezeen.com/2009/11/15/shrub-by-zhili-liu/"

IDEA BOX, through planning, design, implementation and operation of small space, aims to reflect and explore combining business with urban public space and landscape art forms. In addition to bringing creativity to leisurely life in public squares and neighborhoods, IDEA BOX also shows designers’ unique creativity to the public. IDEA BOX will set the works which are designed by well-known designers and artists in Shenzhen Bay Ave in Nanshan Central Distict. This is an interesting try and has a possibility to be enlarged and continued.

Shenzhen Nanshan Central District, which is receiving increasing attention, has gradually been made into a mature business culture center with construction in the fields like commerce, culture, fashion consumption and high-grade commercial office accommodation. Shenzhenwan Ave links residential areas, business and culture together, including important street nodes for leisure and entertainment life of citizens such as Haide Square and Wenxin Square. Nanshan Central District is designed to enrich citizens’ activities in public places, to highlight the creativity and design of Shenzhen as a design capital, and to explore and discover the combination of urban public art and business in this area. Furthermore, it would be very meaningful to form a unique creative atmosphere and to bring the public audience more interactive functions by these designs. We aim to help the citizens experience these creative designs not only from galleries and books but also when walking in the square or shopping, therefore rooting creative designs in the public.

Organizer: Nanshan Central District Government
Invited designers: Famous Hong Kong designer – Freeman Lau; Founder of URBANUS –Yan Meng, Xiaodu Liu; Member of Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI) – Xuefeng Bi
Exhibition Dates: Dec 6, 2009 – Jan 23, 2010
Exhibition Venue: Shenzhen Bay Ave, Nanshan Central District

Haworth is a US based company taking a responsible environmentally friendly approach to manufacturing in China.

Haworth recently released a furniture System called ALLWAYS that was designed in China for the China market.

Cost is remaining a critical issue in most developing countries. Standalone power reticulation is introduced to minimize investment in the facility to take advantage of low-cost labor while offers the flexibility to support workstation churn and on-demand application.

The functional slots of the desk rim ensure seamless connectivity between different elements. This is essential to maximize components usage to support workspace churn from one work settings to the other, says from conventional to new when the needs escalated at the pace minimizing cultural shock.

In addition to the design features, an additional factor in the design that is highly localised, is the option for clients to select bamboo as the working surface of the desk.

Allways design meets the needs of clients in China due to:

Highly adaptable design allows the workplace ot be configured to different layout needs and staff workstyles.

The design of the workstation allows the furniture to be reconfigured rapidly and reliably (metal to metal interface) allowing re-use and reducing cost of ownership
Effective cable routing ensures a neat appearance and connection to user devices
Allways is designed for perfect to either sole or collaborative team working configurations – an emerging trend in China Highly sustainable bamboo surface.
Sustainable design help organisations achieve high levels of LEED qualification

The ALLWAYS system has been successfully sold in China to clients that include Microsoft and HSBC.

Taking a step towards getting people in China engaged in a collaborative dialogue around eco-friendly best practices in manufacturing, American-based office furniture provider, Haworth, hosted the “Green Factory Open Day” at its facility in Shanghai’s Waigaoqiao Economic Zone. The first of its kind event in China took place on Monday and aimed to elevate the awareness and cooperation around environmental sustainability strategies, by bringing together thought leaders from industry, government and non-governmental organizations (NGO’s). The goal is to pursue best practices in green manufacturing in a way that still supports productivity and product quality.

“We are excited about what Haworth and our partners in this new initiative are learning from each other and sharing with the public,” said Frank Rexach Vice President and General Manager of Haworth Asia Pacific, The Middle East and Latin America, “We all recognize the benefits of embracing sustainable practices as part of how we do business, including striving for zero waste, reducing energy consumption, integrating green materials into our products, and partnering with suppliers and service providers that share the same goals. In our own Haworth factory, we already achieve zero waste with everything coming out of our factory being either a finished good or is recycled. Of course there is still more we can do to improve, and we are hoping that after today’s event, we will learn from other companies participating and that a trend will be started whereby more and more companies will be willing to share their best sustainable practices -so that all organisations in China can start the green journey”.

“China welcomes and encourages companies with a solid experience and expertise in sustainability, like Haworth, to share their know-how with local companies. From a government perspective, we will continuously support and encourage the Green enterprise to grow together with China” said Mr. Yue, General Manager of 3U Waigaoqiao Economic Zone. “We would like all factories in the Free Trade Zone to embrace sustainable practices and be a role model for all of China.”

Sponsors of the Green Factory Open Day event include Jones Lang LaSalle, Interface, Akzo-Nobel, Philips, Lutron, JUCCCE, CleanTech, Roots & Shoots, Philips, Owens Corning, EMSI and the 3U Waigaoqiao Economic Zone. Together, they shared their views on the importance of creating strategies around green manufacturing, green design, green products, green supply chain, green buildings and green communities.

The event included tours of Haworth’s new Gold LEED registered “Organic Workspace” in the Shanghai World Financial Centre and their green factory in the Waigaoqiao. While taking the ‘Green Tour’ in the factory, groups discussed the key objectives and challenges around going green. The diverse groups of people were given opportunities to share experiences, discuss issues and solve common problems around sustainability. Key themes proposed in the tour included leveraging rapidly renewable materials, such as rice stalks and bamboo, to replace depleting natural resources; replacing ‘harmful’ materials used in manufacturing; and leveraging wind energy and carbon offset credits, to reduce carbon emissions.

Seven areas of sustainability were emphasized throughout the daylong event. Various attending stakeholders were able to contribute their thoughts, ideas and personal stories relating to the list of concepts proposed by Haworth:

1.Sustainable Product and Workspace Design -understand, reduce and eliminate the negative environmental impacts from the manufacturing, use and end-of-life management of products and spaces.
2.Energy Management -increase energy efficiency and utilize renewable energy alternatives to become climate neutral, with the long-term objective of utilizing 100% renewable energy.
3.Green Transportation -eliminate harmful emissions associated with the distribution of products and services and member business travel.
4.Zero Waste and Emissions -eliminate waste and emissions associated with corporate operations and the production of products and services. This includes elimination of all greenhouse gases.
5.Green Building and Sustainable Site Management -use green building design and practices to construct new buildings and interior renovations for all facilities worldwide and ensure sites in use are managed for sustainability.
6.Social Responsibility -support the communities in which we conduct business and operate as an ethical organization.
7.Stakeholder Engagement -engage all stakeholders in our path toward sustainability.

For the information in this article thanks to Kim-Shing Foo, Neil Salton, Sherman Heng and Jay Brand from Haworth Inc.

MADA s.p.a.m. + Ma Qingyun's South China Science and Technology University 2008 campus design
For other projects, see http://www.madaspam.cn/

I would like discuss some important ideas from book that I am reading at the moment “When China Rules the World,The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World By Martin Jacques”

Martin Jacques is a visiting senior fellow at the London School of Economics, IDEAS, a centre for the study of international affairs, diplomacy and grand strategy, and a visiting research fellow at the LSE’s Asia Research Centre. He is a columnist for the Guardianand the New Statesman.

Five years ago when I spoke at various US institutions including Yale and Pratt about the rising cultural importance of China and the likely effect of the future influence of Chinese Culture on the culture of the West I began to understand that I was stepping on some cultural toes in the United States.Martin Jacques new book courageously discusses the issues of how China may influence Western Culture over the coming decades.

Mary Dejevsky states in a review of the book for the independent :

“In arguing for China's difference, Jacques is treading on a lot of toes. That is all to the good. The Western scholarly and political establishment has been extraordinarily complacent about the implications of an economically successful and more assertive China. The result has been very little real discussion of what a world with a dominant China would be like.

In so saying, Jacques takes on a formidable global establishment and breaks a series of taboos. Chief among them is the idea that Western civilization reflects the pinnacle of universal achievement and that the success of individual countries will forever be measured by how closely they match that model.”

I believe that we are moving into a world where countries that were once colonized by the west including China and India will slowly become the dominant cultures in the World.

China offers an alternative global cultural model to the one developed to date by western countries.

Jacques argues that by 2027 the Chinese economy will equal that of the US and by 2050 will be double the size of the US economy. China currently holds nearly a trillion dollars in US debt. If China was to lose confidence in buying US debt Jacques argues that the US dollar would collapse quickly and New York would lose it's position as the leading world banking and economic center.
This economic codependencece of China and the the West will lead to cultural changes not just in China but also in the West.

Jacques:

“ I think that the West is going to feel extremely disoriented by the world that is in the process of now being made. We’ve so long assumed that the furniture is our furniture, the language is our language, the sports played are our sports, the values are our values...My son’s 10, and his generation is going to grow up in a very, very different kind of world.”

“I think that the world has been so used to American hegemony, and you had a recent period of American history under Bush which actually postulated exactly the opposite scenario—that we were in fact on the eve of a new American century. So we’re just not versed in the profoundly different thinking China’s pre-eminence will require. More than that, we have failed to understand that we’re not just talking about economic change. The impact of China’s rise is going to be at least as great politically and culturally as it will be in economic terms.”

CHINA VIOLENT
Sunday, November 22, THE CLEANERS @ ACE HOTEL

A rupturous evening of art, film, puppetry, books, food and drink by the China Urban Collective of Reed College. Also in celebration of the China Urban exhibition catalog published by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery.

No admission charge. Hors d'œuvres and cash bar.

6:00pm Cocktail party
7:30pm Puppet Show
8:30pm Screening of Johnnie To's masterpiece Chinese gangster film, Mad Detective

THE CLEANERS @ ACE HOTEL 1022 SW STARK ST

Another takeaway from the conversation with Freeman Lau earlier this month: the impact that the Beijing Olympics had on the Chinese design community is hard to overstate. With a unique combination of aesthetic challenge, nationalism and sheer scale, the Olympics employed literally thousands of working designers, and inspired tens of thousands more.

Beijing-based graphic designer Glen Gao had this to contribute to the Olympian design task: Beijing 2008 themed icons for Microsoft User Interfaces.

06 APR 2009: REPORT
China’s Grand Plans for
Eco-Cities Now Lie Abandoned

Mostly conceived by international architects, China’s eco-cities were intended to be models of green urban design. But the planning was done with little awareness of how local people lived, and the much-touted projects have largely been scrapped.

BY CHRISTINA LARSON

If all had gone as planned, “the world’s first eco-city,” as press releases billed it back in 2005, would now be well on its way to completion. The visionary project called for a grassy island near the crowded metropolis of Shanghai to be transformed from a marshy backwater into a gleaming community of energy-efficient buildings housing 50,000 people. Waste was to have been recycled as fuel and the waterfronts were to be lined with sleek micro-windmills. The original timetable called for the first phase of construction to be completed by the Shanghai Expo in 2010, enabling the city to showcase its commitment to building a green future. Within 30 years, the planned community, Dongtan, would grow to accommodate half a million people.

Today, almost nothing has been built. Some residents have been moved off the island, many of them becoming cab drivers in bustling Shanghai. Although the project was widely publicized internationally, most locals knew little about it. The political leaders who championed the project were ousted in a corruption scandal, and their successors have allowed construction permits to lapse.

For full article, see http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2138

To pick up the thread of conversation about cars, the UK program Top Gear wades in with a humorous assessment of Nanjing Automobile Corporation's remake of an ancient (relatively ancient) European model (January 23, 2009, URL: http://foreman.blogs.topgear.com/2009/01/23/wtf-car-awards-mg-tf-le-500/)

Winner of the Unwelcome Return Award…

The Nanjing MG TF LE 500 has been totally ‘re-engineered’ to bring it back up to date with the most modern of sportscars. No, really.
Just because a few geography teachers in Reading have a monthly meeting where they bang on relentlessly about their MGBs, it was deemed necessary to resurrect the aged TF. Which is a bit like bumping into a Page 3 girl and discovering that not only is she not as good as you remembered, but is significantly more baggy now.

They say that the engine isn’t a ‘K’ series Rover – it’s an ‘N’ series. But the ‘N’ is really just a ‘K’ with a metal headgasket and a few reliability tweaks. The suspension has been ‘redesigned’ by the simple expedient of changing the dampers and they’ve robbed the last of Woolworth’s old stock for the 99p stereo/radio with remote control.

Remote control? You can touch the other doorhandle without leaving the driver’s seat. And the final foot-long nail in the TFs cramped and desperate coffin? It costs £16.5k when a ‘last-generation’ TF can be had with low miles in A1 condition for £4k. Do they think we’re stupid? It’s like buying a black and white telly for the price of a flatscreen…