world Expo 2025 taiwan Brighter Futures
For the Osaka 2025 World Expo, Taiwan highlights their innovative might from their aboriginal past, to present-day manufacturing; simultaneously promoting Taiwan's natural beauty as well as their efforts to preserve it. Their last exhibit invites visitors to partake in a tradition to wish upon a lantern for a better future.
Experiential Design, Education, Exhibit Design
Role
Creative Director, Visual Design, Spatial and Experiential Design, Interaction Design, Creative Technologist
Duration
6 Weeks
Skills
Brand Identity, IoT, Storyboarding, Presentations, 3D Modeling, 3D Printing, Prototyping, Animation, Creative Coding
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, AfterEffects, Photoshop, Rhino, Arduino
Overview
A story that needs to be told
Taiwan has not been able to attend a World Expo in their own name other than 2010, making this expo the first time modern audiences are seeing Taiwan. Whether you know Taiwan for its semiconductor industry, or its food, or its natural scenery, I believe the most beautiful thing about Taiwan is the people and their resiliency. The goal of this expo is to share something meaningful about Taiwanese traditions, and to encourage people to visit Taiwan in the future.
My Role
Connecting the past, present, and future
The world expo invites countries to build pavilions in the host city, capturing each country’s dedication to sustainability. Through this pavilion I tell the story of Taiwan’s dedication to the Earth beginning from is aboriginal past to the modern inventions today. I created assets beginning from the physical space, to the UI of the quiz interface in the space.
Motif
Literally and figuratively creating a brighter future
There is a New Year’s tradition where one would put their wishes on the side of a lantern before floating it up to the sky above. It is believed to take away people’s troubles and bring people luck and prosperity. The higher the lantern would climb, the more fortune and wealth it would bring.
Additionally, although not explicitly stated in the following exhibit, sky lanterns were historically used to signify safety. After a village was attacked someone would go back down to the village, and if it was safe they would light the lantern and the rest of the villagers would return. If Taiwan truly will be able to attend an Expo in the future, it would mean something big shifted in their political relationships in a good way, and in a way, signal it’s safe for them again.
Making a meaningful wish
Walkthrough
Archetype Quiz
Define your sustainability personality
Pulling on the popular personality tests, the quiz simultaneously creates an engaging and personalized takeaway artifact and sets the visitor up for the next part of the experience: making a wish for a more sustainable future.
Components
Four sustainability archetypes
In my research there were four sustainability archetypes. By taking the quiz, you would be eventually categorized into one of these archetypes, and a personalized flower will be created. This flower also acts as your digital take-away from the exhibition, that can be shared on social media.
Final Reflections
Researching through people
I’ve gotten used to doing my research online through websites and videos, but it was surprisingly hard to find information about just Taiwan. Not Taiwan the semiconductor industry, or Taiwan and its relationship to China. Some articles I only managed to find after I started Googling in Chinese. However, I ended up getting some of my most valuable information or leads from my family members around me.
Not all things need to be said
When I was talking through my project it seemed like a disgrace to not acknowledge certain parts of Taiwanese history when it has such an impact on their future. I realized though, some things can be left for those who are in the know.
To the people who have helped
To the people I reached out to to ask about Taiwan thank you for thoughtful responses. Especially my mom for sending me articles (even though they were all in Chinese).
To Vicky for helping with me the code of my lantern, you took something that kind of worked to something that worked consistently.
Balancing emotional attachment
This project was such a personal project to me, and that closeness made it hard for me to move forward through the project. There was a strong internal insistence that everything needed to be “perfect.” There has to come a point in the process where you realize that things have to be tried before they can be “perfected.”
Acknowledgements
To the guidance I received
I want to give all my gratitude to Haeyoung. This was the first project I took on that felt more controversial, and more personal. I was pushed to think beyond the conventional to bring this story to life.
Thank you to Luca for being the person to look beyond the web and media to gather research for this project. Our conversations about Taiwan and how it sits within Asia really helped drive this project forward.