Collaboration

FourC After-contest Exclusive Part 1| Breakthroughs and Compromises? Stay Focused? Keep Working? Dig into the Secret of the Grand Prize!

Grand Prize - Team F10WER《FutureBus》

At 8PM (Beijing time),7 June 2020, the closing ceremony of FourC Challenge 24-hour Global Design Charrette Contest with the theme of "Reconnect" was successfully held. This contest is sponsored by Shanghai Jiao Tong School of Design and implemented by the IIDE Program Center. The topic of this contest is "Flowers", and interdisciplinary cooperative design is carried out around this topic. There are over 200 students from 52 universities registered for this contest, including Harvard University, Northwestern University, Rochester Institute of Technology, IE University, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Tsinghua University, and Zhejiang University etc. In the end,a design project of "Futurebus"inspired by dandelion bythe team "F10WER", stood out from all forty teams and won the Grand Prize.

F10WER MEMBERS

LI Xin, Shanghai Jiao Tong School of Design, First Year Graduate student in Industrial Design

YANG Shunli, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, First Year Graduate student in Design Practice

William Ma, Harvard GSD, First Year Graduate student in Architecture

Ryan Teo, Northwestern University, Junior student in Integrated Engineering Studies (Product Design)

Now let’s see how did these four young designers brainstorm in the limited 24 hours!

After discussing several possible fields, we decided that the main purpose is to use design to alleviate people's fear facing public health risks and bring them confidence to restore their daily activities in the post-epidemic era. Possible topic includes restaurant, public transportation systems, park, movie theater, office, hospital, online communities, etc. Afterwards, we further discussed and made clear the theme of our work-- bus. As a main part of public transportation, bus undertakes the most important tasks as urban commuter, it also seems to remain more problems to solve by design methods. Comparing with the closed space and the high automatic/integrated characteristics of the underground system, buses have more complicated issues. If we can solve the bus issue, our design solution can also be transplanted to underground as well.

Inspired by dandelion, we imagine passengers as the seeds, try to figure out how it opens and freely distributes. And then we counted the potential risks that a passenger may be exposed to during the whole process from getting on to getting off the bus through touch or mutual distance, thus found several key issues that can be improved.

Before the start of this contest, the organizer has already informed us the clear description and requirements. Therefore, our team members are all aware that the time was tight. We quickly entered in the status of brainstorming and frequent communication from the very beginning. According to the innovation process required by the organizer, we started from designing the logo in an orderly manner and completed by a team member who had rich experience. In the design process, William from Harvard University, despite his architectural academic background, has a very strong comprehensive ability. He has dominated the planning of the spatial distribution of buses and also provided constructive opinions on the product design process. So even if the academic backgrounds are different, we believe that as long as the team members are capable enough and are committed to one goal, interdisciplinary cooperation will definitely add strength to the work.

Looking back on the whole process, we are actuallybreaking through and compromisingall the time. The biggest limit is the length of 24 hours and the efficiency of online working. To catch up with the progress, we first need tostay focusand come out with a plan as complete as possible. One of the hardest struggle was whether to use half-sided integral door or to introduce half-seated and half-stood seats. The former seems to be very aggressive, which may cause the structure of the bus unstable, while the latter is relatively stable but also brings new problem of space segmentation and unsmooth outlook. Finally, it was pretty late around 2 am. Ryan, who proposed the former door opening plan, convinced us that we should strive to show the judges with a more futuristic idea. Soon we reached a consensus that this design project that we had never thought before could better fit our purpose of "Contactless Circulation", and also perfectly reflected the creative connection of dandelion as the selected flower species. I think the reason why our team has won is exactly because all members are willing to make sometrade-offs and personal compromisesfor the same goal.

Very valuable. We were always inspiring each other with rich creativity, rigorous attitude and positive work enthusiasm; the keynote speeches of the guests and the 24-hour guidance from the mentors also provided us with strong support; the most important is that all brilliant works from each group greatly expanded our thinking and brought many new perspectives to solve problems using design. From the organizer's sufficient before-contest preparations to the smooth contest process, we realize that various tools such as online meeting software and online cloud drive are just the media of communication. The core of communication is and will always be "human" itself, namely the responsibility, unity and cooperation of all the staff, mentors, participating students and volunteers. We believe this also applies to the thinking of "Reconnect" in the post-epidemic era. With the advent of the 5G technology, the communication between people and communities is bound to be more convenient, offline and online barriers will also gradually fade. However, our own subjective initiative is still the key to solving problems and reconnecting with others.

Comments from the Jury Panel

Very comprehensive and systematic concept to balance social distance, functional and emotional requirements.

Clear way to explain the concept, Authentic Problem/Dynamic Solution, good design in details.

The material is well designed for the scenario. Innovative and thoughtful.

• END •