Water Boundaries (水界線) is a sandbag replacement that can, if called upon, be useful even on days that are typhoon-free.
Fill up each accordion-like bag with fresh water, connect them via a unique interlocking mechanism and they become a line of defense against flooding during the rainy season.
“The rest of the time, push a flagpole in the bag and it is a good way to advertise your small business,” said Wang Wen-sheng (王文聖), one of three Ling Tung University (嶺東科技大學) students presenting the carrot-orange sacks at the 33rd Young Designers Exhibition (YODEX, 新一代設計展).
Photos courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
Established in 1982, YODEX has become one of the largest design fairs for students in the world.
From today until Monday, college students are in the World Trade Center presenting about 4,000 designs, mainly their senior-year projects.
The theme this year is Gear Up (預備! 起!), a call for student designers to “have the energy and courage to move forward without fear,” according to a press blurb by executive organizer Taiwan Design Center.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
Water Boundaries, which was shortlisted for the Hansgrohe Preis 2014: Efficient Water Design at the iF Concept Design Awards for young talent, is among several creative contingencies for natural disaster.
From National Taipei University of Technology (臺北科技大學), Green Brave (防栽) is another sandbag replacement that doubles as a hanging plant rack for apartments on fair-weather days.
Refugee Raincoat (避雨), by students from Changhua’s Da-Yeh University (大葉大學), is a raincoat that is also fitted with hidden pockets for medical supplies, food, personal items and other tools that every climate refugee needs.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Design Center
Also on show are pieces that address more prosaic problems, for instance clothes hangers that persistently clump.
This is avoidable with help from built-in repelling magnets, in a design by students at Fortune Institute of Technology (和春技術學院) in Greater Kaohsiung.
For cyclists bringing a bike onto the MRT, there can be the problem of too many bags.
“When people get into the MRT they have to place the bike in a bag, and then they have to separately carry all the other bags,” Hsu Tai-lin (許泰琳), one of three Cheng Kung University (成功大學) seniors who created Bicase, the suitcase bike.
With a few snaps and folds, Bicase transforms from a bicycle into a large ink-black attache that can contain the bike, along with one or two smaller bags. At 9kg, it’s portable and it matches a pencil skirt.
In bike form, Bicase is sleek, featuring tiny wheels and a coaster brake.
“It’s nice and light. The perfect city bike,” Hsu said.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
Francis William White, an Englishman who late in the 1860s served as Commissioner of the Imperial Customs Service in Tainan, published the tale of a jaunt he took one winter in 1868: A visit to the interior of south Formosa (1870). White’s journey took him into the mountains, where he mused on the difficult terrain and the ease with which his little group could be ambushed in the crags and dense vegetation. At one point he stays at the house of a local near a stream on the border of indigenous territory: “Their matchlocks, which were kept in excellent order,
RSS