Plastic City

Since the beginning of design 1 class, Mr. Housefield started to question how and where can we find our inspiration when we design. In addition, we spent a class to do “Stone Soup” activity, which helped us to find inspiration within ourselves. Besides, Mr. Housefield also introduced many inspirable designers, such as Tom Friedman, Tara Donavon, and Andy Goldsworthy, and all of them finding their creativity from nature, or daily life objects. All the examples are helping us to understand it is important to explore our life and find creativity from our surroundings.
While watching YouTube, I came crossed with this video, a Taiwanese designer, Bang-Yao Liu also found his creativity from things around him. Liu thinks that creativity can be found everywhere around our life, which attached the concept that we have learned in design 1 class.

In the video, it was Liu’s first visit to Shanghai. And he found that Shanghai is filled with plastics materials, which caused him to want to make a “plastic city”. Without any planning or sketches, Liu gathered different colors, sizes, and shapes of plastics and finally made his “plastic city” that in his own view of Shanghai look. Although Liu’s is not a famous designer, and his works cannot compare with that of Andy Goldsworthy, or Tom Friedman, he still did a nice demonstration for us on how we find our inspirations. As a designer, I think it is essential for us to go around to different places, absorbing and learning information, and then design what we have learned.