17th La Biennale di Venezia - CITYX VENICE 2021
Digitalstructures: Data and Urban Strategies of the Civic Future
Wendy W Fok and the WE-DESIGNS team is invited to exhibit work on their exploratory research of digitalSTRUCTURES: Data and Urban Strategies of the Civic Future, that engages with and questions the digitalSTRUCTURES (= Infrastructures + digital property). Their participation is part of the CityX Venice, Sezione del Padiglione Italia Italian Virtual Pavilion, at the 17th La Biennale di Venezia.
The two-part project will include the exhibition of digital objects, digitalCurrencies of everyday objects, that will be partnered with a marketplace digital auction, and theoretical writings and research published in a post-exhibition book within the larger research umbrella of digitalSTRUCTURES: Data and Urban Strategies of the Civic Future.
Our team designed the digital platform, a story-telling platform designed with 'choose your own adventure' style learning.
Project website: digitalstructures.cc
The project explores contemporary issues surrounding how Western and Eastern countries define the future of work and urban living. The research provokes interrogations of the post-COVID-19 digital era, pertaining to supply chains, data structures, urban strategies, construction, and civic planning for the cities of our future. An in-depth exploration of graphical mapping and cartography, and how data interacts with various open innovation models in digital property and real property will be key. Developmental topics that explore broader topics hitting humanities and social sciences, such as ethical trade routes and policies of materiality, to engage with interdisciplinary and cross-cultural topics that question policy challenges facing “democracies'' in the 21st century will be the focus.
As the world becomes a more circular economy of information (data), economic, political, and material exchange, this study would promote a larger awareness of the interconnected activities that impact the material (hard goods and soft goods) and technical exchange of trade for our built environment.
Building materials in architecture are of significant impact to our world of construction. Trade and material exchange are key to understanding the impact that works in line with climate changes, and economic growth. This ongoing research is part of a larger investigation in how the contemporary and historic Silk Road structure was designed as a systemic network of power — one that proliferates the modern economies of trade and urban political dispersion of architectural exchanges, in hopes that the takeaways will inform larger discussions for our future generations.
Project Social
Project Website: http://digitalstructures.cc
#digitalSTRUCTURES
Contact
Wendy W Fok
Email: w (at) we-designs.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/WendyWFok
Twitter: http://twitter.com/W_W_F
Press & Communications
Kristina Soriano-Jacobs
Email: kristina (at) we-designs.com
Lillian He
Email: lillian (at) we-designs.com
NYC Census 2020
COLLABORATION: Our team is grateful to have worked with the New York City Census Bureau on their NYC Census 2020 digital and physical campaigns. The campaign launched all around New York City, and was part of the #GetCountedNYC initiative, along with the NYC Mayor’s Office and Census 2020. Our designed several assets for the campaign, including accessible videos, subway banners, and bus wraps.
US Architects Declare 2021
WE-DESIGNS is proud to be part of the US Architects Declare. #architectsdeclare
US Architects Declare is a network of architects organizing for radical change in the building sector around climate, social justice, and biodiversity. Architects Declare started in the UK in 2019 by inviting architectural firms to sign on as signatories to a joint declaration and has grown into a global network with declarations from 23 countries. Architects Declare places the responsibility and imperative on the architectural community, on architecture firms, and on architecture schools to state and enact change. Through this collective work, which is locally defined but globally connected, we can amplify both our knowledge and our impact toward change.
Efforts in the US have been defined by an intersectional approach to climate, justice, and biodiversity. We believe that these issues must be understood in relation to each other, and that the urgency of the crisis requires immediate transformation in the ways we teach, practice, and build. Further, we believe that this means working collectively, across offices and institutions, to think beyond the boundaries of our roles on individual projects. Incremental approaches will not bring about rapid systemic change. Furthermore, we understand that black, indigenous, and other people of color have been disproportionately impacted by historical and present-day actions that perpetuate societal inequities and preserve white privilege.
We see our work as complementary and supportive of a range of organizations addressing complex climate, social, and ecological challenges. The network is non-hierarchical, decentralized, and democratic. This means that it relies heavily on members’ participation, both as individuals and as workers in their offices and institutions.
US Architects Declare is not looking for a one-size-fits-all solution, recognizing that different firms, institutions, and individuals have different capacities to challenge the status quo. That said, we firmly believe that everyone has a role to play and a next step to take.
More information: US Declare
DATA, MATTER, DESIGN 2021
Pleased to announce our Chapter “Bio-Data Matter of New York City” that our team researched, exhibited, and contributed to is released in ”DATA, MATTER, DESIGN: Strategies in Computational Design" published by Routledge. Edited by Frank Melendez, Nancy Diniz, & Marcella Del Signore #biodatamatter
The book presents a comprehensive overview of current design processes that rely on the input of data and use of computational design strategies, and their relationship to an array of outputs. It includes a wide range of curated projects and contributed texts by leading architects, urbanists, and designers that transform data as an abstraction, into spatial, experiential, and performative configurations within URBAN ECOLOGIES, EMERGING MATERIALS, ROBOTIC AGENTS, ADAPTIVE FIELDS, and VIRTUAL CONSTRUCTS.
Available on Amazon:
https://lnkd.in/eb23aub
Routledge: @routledgeart
https://lnkd.in/eyMzgzg
GRAY AWARDS 2020
Finalist: Sensorial Estates x Hong Kong Pavilion
For the London Design Biennale 2018 theme ‘Emotional States’, the WE-DESIGNS team designed the experience, production, and design-build of the Hong Kong Pavilion.
‘Sensorial Estates’, focuses on the sensory experience of smell and its relationship with nostalgia and memory in the context of everyday life. Exploring the emotionally profound link between smell and time/space, the Hong Kong Pavilion focuses on the exploration of how the sensorial experience of smell heightens nostalgia and memory within our everyday lives and how smells can take us back to physical places and states of being. If visitors have ever passed through Hong Kong, its sensorial estates are sleeping within the memory; the experience of the Pavilion, and its various sensorial estates, immerse the viewers into different emotive states through smell.
The research and development of this installation explore the sensorial representation of Hong Kong through an interactive, sensorial, physical, and tactile installation. It will aim to showcase emblematic cultural icons and experiences and capture local influences through site-specific objects and designs — representing the locality, regionality, and complexity of Hong Kong.
As the visitor moves through the pavilion to view the exhibited works and curated objects, they will interact with the scent experiences created within the space and through a variety of scratch-and-sniff wallpapers. The pavilion installation explores how ‘smell’ triggers our emotional state more intensively.
The spatial design and concept are theoretically inspired by Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, and graphically inspired by Andy Warhol and MC Escher. The final installation and exhibition is designed by the WE-DESIGN team and was commissioned to them through the auspiciousness of the London Design Biennale Art Director Christopher Turner. Funding is made possible in part by the Hong Kong Economic Trade Office (London), and several private donors.
‘These distinctive smells and tactile shapes remain the most instinctual way I continuously experience and develop the nostalgia and memories of my Hong Kong identity, even from the other side of the world. And, I would like to use this installation to share that experience with the public.’
– WE-DESIGNS, Lead Designer
PROJECT DETAILS
Design Team:
Lead: Wendy W Fok, Design Lead
Camila Varon Jaramillo, Lead Producer & Designer
Eugene Ong, Graphic Design
Erin Lee Carman, Social Media
Lillian He, Head of Communications (Project)
Collaborators:
Artistic director: Christopher Turner, V&A Museum, UK
Date of Completion:
September 2018
To read more go to Gray Magazine's site: Wild Card Award Category