People’s Power Station by Matt Hope. [Agencies]

Spiritual structuring is the theme of The Solutions: International Design Exhibition, or, in Chinese simply Tao, one of three exhibitions at the 2011 Chengdu Biennale examining how design responds to rapid changes of reality.

The exhibition is curated by Ou Ning, founder of the Get it Louder Exhibition and chief curator of the 2009 Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennake of Urbanism / Architecture and a man known for his chutzpah. Ou invited 30 exhibitors of manufacturing, architecture, fashion, visuals and new media.

"We've utilized the creativity of design to experiment and react to the exhibition agenda," Ou said.

Two designers, Liu Jing and Matt Hope elaborated on past and present projects at an early preview of the large-scale exhibit, running from September 30 till October 30.

Social engineering

Since the Industrial Revolution, design has serviced the commissioner, Ou said.

"This kind of relationship restricts design to demonstrate its subjectivity and autonomy. In other social models, such as socialism, it is utilized by a larger state apparatus and thus becomes the component in the production and promotion system, regardless of its subjectivity and autonomy."

"What is design? And where is its freedom?" Ou asked, positing the idea that accepting largesse then barely bothering to fulfill obligations is acceptable, as long as "one" is "free."

Archigram, a London-based avant-garde architecture group formed in the 1960s, have spared no effort getting rid of such traditional employment relationships. "They've written quite a few drafts about experimental architectural projects, trying to construct their radical Utopia," said Ou.

"Peter Cook, a member of Archigram, planned his artwork Instant City and Blow-out Village in 1966... [to solve] past urban problems."

Good design hopes to exceed beyond its constraining material layers and enter the level of social engineering—its ultimate purpose, Ou said.

Ou was critical of a rigid view that believes that, if you accept free advertising from a company, for example, it betokens an obligation to communicate: to respond to e-mails, fulfill deadlines and show up as promised being typical example of such an inflexible system.

"Social engineering, also described by Joseph Beuys as 'Social Sculpture,' is not meant to stay at the rigid material world, but also be involved in the political, economic, cultural and other social 'software.'"

Perhaps it's a matter of 'abstainability' rather than sustainability, Liu said - a concept that's something Ou certainly knows about.

"[It's about] organizing existing matters in a way that accept gaps as moments of recess, rather than quickly producing more to fill them in," she explained. "We can let our waterfront flood and enjoy the fertile habitat of the wetland."

Hopeful future?

Liu was educated in China, Japan, the UK and the US and worked at New York firm Kohn Pedersen Fox and Starwood prior to founding SO-IL (Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu) with Florian Idenburg.

Her design with SO-IL, Pollination, is a truck hauling a small park. "This truck will wander around Chengdu. People can freely get on and take control of the spraying machine, to spread the seeds everywhere in the over-developed and too-urbanized city," she explained. "It's a romantic design."

Matt Hope's People's Power Station utilized a suite of standard Chinese public-exercise equipment with electric mechanical capture devices to harness kinetic energy of users and create outdoor lighting.

"People's Power Station demands the participation and interaction of the public in order to keep running," Hope explained. "This gear-train drives a drum of rare earth magnets that brush by coils of copper wire spinning at nine times per second... thereby producing a rotating electromagnetic field that induces a rhythmic pulse of electrons to flow down connecting wires.

"This AC electrical charge terminates between an anode and cathode, resulting in a barrage of photons that bombard a nearby viewer with trillions of sub-atomic light particles."

"The tendency of design grows even stronger since the birth of Internet," Ou concluded.

"Design is the strategy and solution to pressing social issues. It will achieve real autonomy in the exploration of 'Tao,' the highest spiritual principle," Ou said, neglecting to immediately make clear how one reconciles that with fecklessness. Despite this omission, Tao remains both the Chinese title of the exhibit - and its crucial theme.