Misty Bamboo: A Landscape Painting of Past & Future

Founded by the government, Creative Expo Taiwan showcases and promotes the very best design talent, products, and services from the island of Taiwan to an international audience. For 2016, KYDO created host country Taiwan’s main exhibition hall. As 2016’s World Design Capital, the space had to fulfill multiple ambitious design goals: convey the cultural identity of Taiwan; exhibit a uniquely Taiwanese perspective on design and lifestyle; while showcasing harmoniously various products within its space, each with a different story to say.

To succinctly express the nation’s identity, Misty Bamboo took inspiration from two main sources—a traditional ink painting, “Misty Bamboo on a Distant Mountain,” and the icon of tea, a world-renowned Taiwanese export steeped in culture and time. Together, the elements of tea, bamboo, and ethereal, misty landscape distill the nation’s design roots—an appreciation for quiet sophistication and reflection, seen in the understated, elegant lifestyles of ancient scholars. This interpretation of design’s ancient cultural roots thus became a window into the nation’s modern design ambitions.

Visitors traverse the space by walking along the central gallery, an experience akin to the slow, poetic unveiling of a scrolled painting. Tea canisters—cultural icon of the nation—line the corridor, while light filters softly through the bamboo. A dialogue between the natural and the industrial, light refracted through the hollow polypropylene sheets present an ever-shifting view of the bamboos behind as you walk. Bamboos appear to sway in mist and wind as they shift in perspective, while the abstracted silhouettes present a modern interpretation of the painting’s brushstrokes.

A serene respite, the gallery harmonizes disparate products on display by being a neutral, understated, and contemplative space. Visitors spy discrete display zones through the diffused light of the polypropylene, a “peekaboo” concept rooted in Chinese landscape design’s idea of “borrowed scenery.” This foreshadowing buffers the transition between different areas of the hall, even as visitors traverse and experience different display zones during the length of their visit.

As a modern showcase rooted in the nation’s cultural, design, and aesthetic past, Misty Bamboo brings to life a nation’s creative identity in the space of 362m². It is both past and present; platform and destination; scenery to be seen, and scenery to be in. But most importantly—no more and no less than a potent symbol of Taiwan’s creative future.

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Project Completion date: 2016 April

Dimensions: 362m²

Materials: 4 meter high steel shelves, hollow polypropylene sheets, bamboo

Credits:

Exhibition Curator - Chun-Liang Chen

Collaborator - FreeImage Design

Display Director - Zhi-Ren Zheng

Photographer - Te-Fan Wang, Ding Zheng