Designer | Researcher
Project
Chinatown or Chinatown？
Research
Personal Perject
Role：Researcher
(2023. London)
This project focuses on Chinatown to study the sustainable dissemination and development of Chinese culture in the context of a non-mainstream cultural society.
In this project, I have analysed this core of Chinese cultural diffusion from my personal experience, in terms of timeline and dual identity (tourist and culture creator). A number of new primary research skills were developed and implemented (observation, behaviour, interviews, role-playing, popular games) and these were refined in the study and documentation (through drawings, photographs), where the idea of playing the role of a Chinatown tourist helped me to better capture the experiential data in the study, and throughout the research process, the issues surrounding the development of Chinese culture in London (which has been the subject of the awkward and ambiguous of 'the visible and the invisible'") there was constant critical reflection and iteration on the findings.
At the same time, the breadth and depth of this project (from observations of architectural styles to cuisine as well as people's behaviours and perceptions) means that these findings based on Chinatown have the potential to be applied in a number of directions, and in the course of the research, I have uncovered interesting details about hidden dynamics such as how high rents can impact on the experience of dining. There are many different macro dynamics involved, including the commodification of cultural spaces (or 'Disneyfication' as discussed in the concluding article), the ways in which globalisation has homogenised communities, the consumerism of urban spaces, architectural colonialism, and so on.
- Project Cover- Overview- Project Motivations
- Immigration Museum - Archives analysis - Interviews
- IN CHINATOWN: As a tourist
- In Chinatown : The Dead River
- Collaborative Game: Chinatown or Chinatown?
- Analysis, Reflection and design opportunity