Tainan: Days 8-10

September 8-10, 2024

9/8 – Haircut + Bula + night market

9/9 – NCKU lectures + Jonathan House Bookstore + indigo dye + dinner + stationary store

9/10 – NCKU circular design lecture + project brainstorming + dinner

These were our first few days at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), and our ~2 week design sprint has officially kicked off! During our first full day in Tainan, I got my hair permed with Jennifer and learned a lot about the differences between public transportation in Tainan and Taipei. As I talked to my hairdresser who grew up in Tainan, they gave me a wide variety of food, shopping, and dessert recommendations. However, the rainy weather made transportation very difficult and unreliable, which was different from the convenience of the MRT that we were used to. Despite the difficulty getting to our location, my hairdresser’s recommendation of Bula (冷奶油咖椰吐司-台南總店) ended up being a really unique and exciting experience! This restaurant was run by one man, only had five seats, and required a reservation. (Thankfully, the owner let us in without a reservation.) As I talked to the owner, I found out that he just bought an old house and was in the process of renovating it by himself! When he learned that I was a design student, he showed me the staircase he designed himself which was suspended by triangular steel cables. He explained that previously the stairs were supported by brick, but made the room feel claustrophobic. So, he took out the brick and mimicked the structure of steel cables on suspension bridges to support the staircase. This conversation was so inspiring to me and reminded me that design is everywhere and can be done by anyone. I was also reminded that designing something that makes life better can give the same joy and excitement to anyone.

The next day, we attended a lecture on cross-cultural design, and got our design brief. We also visited an indigo dye studio, where we dyed our own cloth! Before this workshop, I knew that indigo used to be a highly traded commodity, but I had no knowledge of its properties or value. As the artisan was teaching us the process of creating indigo dye, I was shocked to find out that the blue color comes from green leaves! I had always thought that indigo was a blue flower, so the making process was exciting to learn about. The most interesting part of the presentation for me was when the artisan talked about the properties that indigo dye gives to clothing. Because it’s a natural dye, it is antibacterial and will not smell. It is also a mosquito repellent, and has various healing properties! This reminded me that natural materials and processes (although they are beneficial) are often overlooked because using products such as synthetic dyes are faster and cheaper. This also related to the lecture on circular design that we attended today. Although all of the world’s natural processes are circular, we as humans still make our products the easier and cheaper linear fashion instead.

After the indigo workshop, a small group of us went to 1933, a restaurant that the translator at the studio recommended to us. We had the BEST food of the trip so far there! We ordered salt pork, squid, scallops, etc., and every single dish was amazing. There was a thunderstorm outside while we ate, which I think made the food and atmosphere even better! After dinner, we were all craving the cubed ice cream that the indigo workshop provided. So, we tracked down the shop and bought a ton of different ice cream desserts. All-in-all, day 9 has been my favorite day so far!

Today, the circular design lecture given by Assistant Professor Wan-Ling Chang was extremely informative and helped me think about design from a different standpoint. All of her examples of different circular business models made me realize how important it is to be sustainable on all fronts. I learned that just using recycled materials doesn’t equate to a true circular model. This lecture in combination with witnessing the efforts of so many designers to right our “original sin” of creating consumer products has made me realize the need to prioritize sustainable practices and innovation in creating our future products.