Jointly organized by the MEOA’s Industrial Development Bureau, the Tainan City Government, and the National Cheng Kung University Art Center, and executed by the Taiwan Design Center, Taiwan Design Expo 2017 will be held from September 30 to October 15 under the theme of “Design for Happiness” using National Cheng Kung University’s old library compound as its main venue. The expo will incorporate six satellite venues, and over 100 events and activities will be organized at the eight major venues during the expo.
Jointly hosted by IDB Director-General Leu Jang-hwa, Tainan City Cultural Affairs Bureau Director-General Yeh Tse-shan, and NCKU Art Center Director Chen Sheng-fen, the pre-expo press conference was held at Songshan Cultural and Creative Park in Taipei on September 11, in a warmup for the annual event of Taiwan’s design industry.
The Expo will feature the following exciting contents:
1. ( ) of Happiness—the ( ) represent all kinds of objects and stories of happiness; 25 professionals from different disciplines, including artists, choreography directors, architects, designers, gourmets, and billboard painters, have been invited to share their objects and stories of happiness.
2. From the perspectives of enterprises and designers, we will explore how Taiwan’s renowned textile technology, cloud computing, circular economy, and green technology will bring more visions of happiness to our life and environment!
The theme of the Taiwan Design Expo ’17’s Southern Breeze Pavilion is “Transit”, guiding people into seven different spaces in the warm southern city of Tainan to discover the real happiness of the city.
The six major satellite venues include:
1. The Emerging Designers Pavilion is themed “Indigo Blue comes from Indigo Plants,” gathering 37 teams of emerging designers and brands to weave old and new ideas together in the Blueprint Cultural and Creative Park.
2. The Craft Tainan Pavilion held at Wu’s Garden Culture Center features the subthemes “Craft heirloom- international creative workshop: from old clothes to new life”, “Design Local Craft into Fashion”, “Experience Cultural Lifestyle: Craft X Tea Ceremonies”, and “Fresh Craft in Tainan”. The four subthemes aim to ignite rejuvenation of the old city’s own crafts.
3. Creative Tainan’s Folk Arts Parade Gallery adopts unique narratives and perspectives, with a creative tone to its magical installations, to inspire unlimited possibilities for the cultural transformation of the folk arts parade.
4. The Living Pavilion at 321 Art Village focuses on “life,” and uses the word “transition” as its main concept, guiding visitors onto a quest for the limits and limitlessness of art and design in various disciplines.
5. The Experience Pavilion at the Tainan Cultural and Creative Park gathers the most storied tourism factories in Taiwan, and presents five exhibition themes: “Travel for life”, “Travel for aesthetics”, “Travel for experience”, “Travel to markets”, and “Travel with one thousand people”.
6. The theme of “Betwin Ocean” at NCKU C-Hub is the design development of the circular economy, inviting domestic and international creative works to present the connection and cooperation between Taiwan and the world.