WDC Taipei 2016 – Adaptive City Exhibition Now on View in Cape Town

15 October 2014, Cape Town – The Taipei City Government has organized a special pavilion on the theme of “WDC Taipei 2016 – Adaptive City” at the Design House transforming cities Exhibition. The pavilion reveals how Taipei is using design-led thinking and the spirit of social design to upgrade the city’s innovative power.

The Design House Exhibition—Transforming Cities, which opened on 15 October, is one of the signature events of WDC Cape Town 2014. The venue is the Cape Town Stadium at Green Point, a local landmark that hosted several matches of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. To let Capetowners and international visitors alike get a feel for Taipei’s traditional culture and its innovative thinking in social design, the WDC Taipei 2016 Office invited well-known Taiwanese industrial designer Yu-Jui Chou to serve as the Taipei pavilion’s curator. The atmosphere he has created by using traditional Taiwanese wooden benches to form a display platform. On display are exhibits on five major projects that the Taipei City Government has been pursuing since 2013: Meet Taipei :Design, which seeks to embed design in citizens everyday lives and upgrade our city’s streetscapes; the Idea Taipei Creative Workshop, which calls upon citizens, designers and city administrators to jointly develop solutions for urban issues; the Design Foundation Teaching Project, which locates designers in idle classrooms at middle and elementary schools, enabling design education to start young; the Universal Design Co-creation Project, which encourages passionate social enterprise groups to put forward people-oriented, living-friendly design projects; and the Taipei Street Cleaners’ Equipment Improvement Project, an example of the “Public Policy by Design” approach, which brings design into the formulation of public policy and promotes design-led thinking among city administrators.

The exhibits showcase Taipei City’s unique social design projects, enabling exhibition visitors to appreciate the difficulties experienced by various public service users, and to understand the improved designs. Visitors can also show their support for Taipei City’s WDC project by getting their pictures taken in front of the huge WDC 2016 logo, and can have the photos printed out on the spot to take home with them. Taipei City Government welcomes the publics to have a good taste of Taipei (Taiwan) during the five-day show.