where we organise the Beijing Design Week

who currently resides and works in Beijing at the Caochangdi Art District was a featured designer at the 2011 Beijing Design Week and was also instrumental in initiating the use of Caochangdi as one of the three major design hub locations during 2012 Beijing Design Week.
“Since Ai Weiwei moved here, the village has become an art community. The place is like a rocket launchpad where you can meet the most interesting individuals from all kinds of industries.

“My house is like a public space. There are tonnes of people coming in. I’m sociable and like to have people come visit. The house is designed by Weiwei. I can’t buy it but I rent it as one can only buy on a long-term lease. We need to live here, no matter how long,” she concluded, sharing her ideas on design, work and life.

I made a crate so I could live out of it. The Crates was my first breakthrough made out of plywood because that’s what shipping crates are supposed to be made of. The choice of material and hardware satisfy the function. I’ve dealt with a lot of crates when I was doing exhibition designs and found them to be stable, sustainable and containing a structure that simply makes sense.

I’ve sold quite a lot of The Crates to private owners and have worked with some fashion and jewellery brands to make their crates. My crates are now sold in London, Beijing, Hong Kong and Paris. The prices vary from sofas to bars and the most popular is the foosball table.

My second series, Fold, represents set furniture that can be folded and opened up to become tables, chairs and cupboards. The first generation was made out of plywood because they were made for exhibitions so they needed to be simple, as they were. 

Monument is a new series featuring the Pentagon Day Bed, with a two scale model of the Pentagon itself, which I regarded as the safest place to sleep in, as inspiration for this design. In the miniature range, I’ve designed Flammable, a series of candles representing all the iconic skyscrapers of the world.

I’m self-made and have eight employees. On a typical day, I wake up at noon and go to the factory. I really love being in the factory as there, we talk about the projects we need to do, solve problems, do some good designs and talk to people. Then, I’ll come back. We have our office as well where we organise the Beijing Design Week. I will only go out if I have to attend a meeting. When I’m home, I’ll work on my drawings. My life is all about work, but it’s fun.

The core of Chinese culture is very embracing and we just have to strive and adapt. The condition of life has always been difficult but Chinese people can always thrive so my design makes the most of what we have.
It’s no point asking why it is so unfair but (we have) to find a way through design. Ultimately, design and the task of design is to improve life, be it aesthetically or functionally.

I consider my life situation as a practical problem to solve in terms of displacement. Where you live and how long your life is going to stay that way is unpredictable. 

 There are literally hundreds of millions of people facing huge displacement. The Chinese have a long history of feeling attached to their homes but people have to understand that in order to get a better life, they have to relocate. In order to find a better life, you have to move from city to city, and from region to region. And, this has never happened so massively in China.

We have a huge population, so anything that happens is big. Beijing has 20 million people which is almost the same as in Malaysia itself.

This is a problem as everybody is moving from their homes to a new place and in-between different jobs. People are constantly changing locations.

I wasn’t born in Beijing but I’m living in Beijing. In Beijing, I have to move to a new location constantly to look for a better life. Even I feel like a migrant or refugee all the time. The home for us, is just a very thin area.
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