On Friday, I had the opportunity for an ad hoc lecture organized by Bundspace, under the umbrella of the Dutch Design Workspace at 1929 Artspace on the North Bund. To a small gathering of about 20 people, I gave a talk about the interface between designers and marketers and the challenges we face to create a successful commercial environment. It was a fairly in-depth presentation that was well-received by the audience. I tried to make the argument that marketing is influenced by culture and due to this, the age-old expectations of commercial design could evolve into something much more "lively", literally speaking.

So here are some excerpts from my presentation, minus the original dialogue, of course. 🙂

This was a project that I first started working on in June of 2011, when I first joined WAA. It's part of the greater CBD of Chongqing Tiandi.

I last visited this project in April 2014. It's on my to-blog list to write about that journey. Please note that I'm quite a ways behind on my "to-blog" list, but slow and steady wins the race, as they say.

We spent a long harmonizing our design for this project, including not only planting but the urban environment of paving, furniture, bollards, etc.

And here is the result. The granite benches in the foreground were designed by me -- it's one of the first design details I've drawn that has gotten built in China...

Then I switched gears to show some atmospheric renderings from Rui Hong Xin Cheng to be built in Shanghai very shortly.

After ending the presentation, I fielded a few questions, most of which talked about influence of mobile devices or about construction quality, or about what getting a design you want with heavy constraints (the latter of which is highly subjective based on contextual matters). For having less than five days to put a 52 slide presentation together, I'd say I did quite well. 🙂 In fact, although it's not a result of this lecture, I will be having another talk, this time at ArcDes on August 8th. Looking forward to seeing you there!