Chinese students compete with design for Swedish Expo
One hundred Chinese design students are competing in designing products to be sold in the Swedish pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai 2010. The winning products must be innovative, sustainable and useful in everyday life.
The contest is organized by the Swedish Expo Committee in cooperation with leading design schoool Konstfack, led by Professor Bob Lee. Students from Tongji University Design and Innovation Institute in Shanghai are already in the process of developing their entries.
Gustav Gullberg and Daniel Eriksson, industrial designers from design agency Transformer and former Konstfack students, participate as mentors. They describe meeting the students as being interesting from both a cultural and a commercial point of view.
– There are definite differences in the way a Swedish industrial designer approaches a challenge, compared with a Chinese one. Engaging Chinese designers to better appeal to that market reflects a Swedish attitude to the outside world. We instead contribute with processes and practices based on observations of ordinary people’s needs and problems. Designs that help people, says Gustav Gullberg.
Right now all entries are being judged by the Tongji University’s own jury. The ones they choose will in the next step be judged by an international jury, consisting of Ted Hesselbom from the Röhsska Museum and Lars Dafnäs, Design Director at IKEA, and Chinese representatives that remain to be announced. The idea is to put the winning designs into production and sell them in the Swedish pavilion.
– The students are asked to find inspiration from the theme for the Swedish Pavilion,”Spirit of Innovation”, but it is not enough to develop an innovative product. The Expo2010 goes under the theme ”Better City, Better Life” and is about sustainability. We want to see product that can be used in everyday life and they’re welcome to be produced from recycled or recyclable materials, says Annika Rembe, Commissioner General of Sweden’s participation in the Expo2010.
For more information contact:
Tove Engstrom, Communications manager, tove.engstrom@expo2010.se, +46 761-06 74 66
Gustav Gullberg, gustav.gullberg@transformator.net, or Daniel Eriksson, +46 703 99 38 34.
