Look & Touch

A new museum experience for children
These tools are aimed to enhance a child’s natural curiosity and turn the museum experience into an adventurous game of hide and seek, full of serendipity and discovery while allowing them to have a shared understanding of a museum’s collection with parents and classmates.

London 2012

in collaboration with Hong-Yeul Eom, Luc Fusaro, Yan Lu & Eegan Koo
Selected to design the podium for the Victory Ceremonies in the London 2012 Games.

8X8

This MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) controller was completed in early 2011. Comprised of 64 programable LED lit buttons, it is capable of live audio sampling, displaying text, and simulating two turntables and a mixer among other things.
Logic board provided by Monome.
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Storyware

in collaboration with Alicia Tam, Hawys Tomos & Yinghui Hu

Our aim was to design an object or experience that helps one feel a deeper connection to ones family history, and to create something of great personal value. Storyware communicates a story through a functional set of objects. Drinking tea is traditionally a communal activity, and a time for families to discuss and share. Stories are harvested from family members, recorded, and then embedded into ceramic using technology similar to vinyl records or wax cylinders. Throwing clay is a traditional craft, and the fragility of the material acts as a reminder of the fragility of family heritage as migration disperses close-knit families and communities. The tea-cups and their integral narratives are to be protected, enjoyed and cherished.

These tea-cups were hand crafted from porcelain with the help of ceramic students at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Sound was then etched into the outer surface using an ad-hoc dictaphone. The result is a functional set of ceremonial cups with an embedded audio history, which can be played back via analog sound devices.For this particular set we recorded the voice of Dr. Li. Dr. Li is a retired professor of Tsinghua University who has opened his own vocational training school in inner-city Beijing; teaching impoverished teenagers how to build and repair computers. The school, located in an ancient Hutong„ will soon be displaced due to rapid urban development of inner Beijing. Dr. Li’s story was played back through Storyware cups on a salvaged record player as part of an effort for Chinese cultural retention.

Selected Work, Seoul Design Fair and Salone del Gusto Turino

Sun Sharing

in collaboration with Hong-Yeul Eom & Yan Lu

Sun Sharing is a global network of optical fibre, bringing sunlight from anywhere in the world to your home. We envision that by 2020, we will have developed optics capable of relaying natural light across time zones without using electricity. Lens receptors located around the world focus natural sunlight into a network of underground optical fibre. 3 meter diameter bundles of optical fibers transverse continents are laid along the ocean floor. Each individual silica fibre is doped with a special combination of rare earth molecules to amplify the magnitude of light. Bundles of optical fibre are split with distribution connection boxes, which are under vacuum to minimize loss of light intensity. Imagine: London’s street lamps streaming light from the Californian sun; the Gobi desert illuminating a tunnel in Tokyo; or bathing in the Australian sun during a Norwegian winter. By sharing natural sunlight, we can redistribute our energy needs and usage more equally.

It’s always sunny somewhere.

First Place, The Future Agenda Design Competition sponsored by Vodaphone

Muebleria Leon Mendoza

During the summer of 2010, I worked as an in house designer at Muebleria Leon Mendoza, one of Mexico’s most prolific wooden furniture manufacturers. While there, I evaluated the entire fabrication process, from raw materials to finished product, adding value where ever I could. This included the introduction of a worker safety report system, new ergonomically designed work benches for the employees, training workers in advanced carpentry techniques, as well as branding initiatives for the entire line of furniture.

Nutapult

concept work in collaboration with Santiago Ortega & Oliver Pontz
final design and production Heegun Koo, Daniel Watson & Sae-ra Kang

Nutapult is a new way to crack nuts. It is a playful product that joins holiday traditions and the mischievousness of boyhood. Made from a variety of milled hardwood, its negative shape harks to the backpocket sling shots of childhood while its shallow profile allows it to live between books on a shelf; perfect for winter, family moments infront of the fireplace.