The Circular Living Design Challenge
A multistage design challenge for fostering creative industries and digital fabrication in Hanoi, Vietnam as a part of Hanoi Rethink.
Hanoi Rethink
Hanoi Rethink is a joint project by UNESCO, UNIDO, and UN-Habitat, for fostering creative industries and digital fabrication in Ha Noi, to transition towards a creative economy. The role of the Fab City Foundation was the coordination and execution of project activities required to achieve specific outputs related to enhancing the capacities of local Fab Labs, and young designers, and developing innovative products in cooperation with local partners.
The Circular Living Design Challenge
The Circular Living Design Challenge was an open design contest organised by Fab City Foundation as a key activity of the Hanoi Rethink Project in Vietnam. The main goal was fostering the local creative ecosystem of Hanoi. Unlike a conventional design contest where entries come in as final designed products, this challenge took a unique approach by creating a multiple-stage process to engage creatives for a longer time in the creative ecosystem by working continually with local Fab Labs, maker spaces, and the community.
Stage one was aimed at maximum participation with a low barrier to entry; entries were expected in the form of sketches and in the ideation phase. FCF facilitated the realisation of these ideas through a 2-day Make-a-thon event in Hanoi to help prototype the ideas with the help of local Fab Labs and Creative Hubs. The entries from the second stage were prototypes that were evaluated by a panel of experts from the local creative community as well as the global Fab Lab and Fab City Networks.
Three projects were then selected as winners on the basis of their creativity, sustainability, technological feasibility, social impact, and scalability. The next stage was a three-month project development period where they were supported by the FCF to work with local labs and agencies, supported by mentors from the global community, and gained global exposure by participating in events like the Bali Fab Fest and Hanoi Creative Design Festival 2022. The following section describes the three winning projects in detail.
Circular Living Design Award-Winning Projects
Sounds of recycled wood
Ms. Nguyễn Thị Hảo is a school teacher who recycles twigs, and scraps of wood and turns them into school supplies, toys, and home decor items. By integrating a fun aspect like a recording device in the toys, she is proud that they bring joy, excitement, and enjoyment not only to children but also to adults alike.
The overarching idea of the project is to change people’s perception of wood waste, the sense of using them, and the issue of environmental protection in a creative manner.
She designs simple assembled wood models so that people can experience how to make simple items by themselves with techniques such as nailing, screwing, and structural assembly. She used pieces of the excess recycled wood from the carpentry workshops. The use of recycled wood is also a way to reduce waste, make the most of materials, and a meaningful lesson about protecting the environment. Her voice recorders are purchased from electronics stores and then modified. She uses a receiver microphone and a speaker output connected to a circuit. She finds the electrical task quite difficult because it’s not her area of expertise, but she works with science and technology students to develop this recording device.
By the end of the project development duration, she succeeded in testing decent sound quality with a recording capacity of 30 seconds. However, the recording device has not yet reached her level of satisfaction in terms of its size, aesthetic and sound quality. She also wants to develop it into pre-recorded custom sounds in the future. She is grateful to the students of Hanoi University of Science and Technology and the guidance of the mentors who made that part easier for her to accomplish. Digital fabrication has helped her understand technology more and empowered her to use machines and techniques to bring her ideas to life.
She believes that the reuse of wood in teaching tools has not been developed in Vietnam. Her approach can be replicated and scaled in the future with the fast-growing demand for children to learn through making. She believes her project has great potential to develop into a business.
Mi Tom Xanh
Mi Tom Xanh is an organisation that collects, recycles, and turns plastic noodle wraps into fashion accessories, household goods, and decorations.
This project is by Nguyễn Công Duy Anh, Lê Ngọc Linh and Vũ Thị Thảo. 100% of profits from the sale of their products are distributed to charitable causes such as the national Covid-19 aid, the Central region natural disaster fund, and the national TV channel fund for unfortunate children (Cặp lá yêu thương). Their vision is to educate people, especially the youth, on environmental awareness, develop skill sets for self-recycling to promote a sustainable lifestyle and while also generating an income source for them.
They use noodle packages as their main material. These packages are cleaned, categorised, and donated by more than 200 collaborators from all over the country. They also use some other handicraft materials for the decorations, such as ribbons, glue, buttons, and zippers. They struggled with the time it took to research and create new products. Access to a Fab Lab gave them the opportunity to broaden their knowledge of innovative technologies and sustainable development, enabling them to think outside of the box and come up with alternative creative ideas for their project. They also restructured their organisation to improve the work quality and time commitments of the members.
Even though the beauty and uniqueness of their products lie in handicraft art, they think digital fabrication will undoubtedly be useful in the future for the scaling of their operation. One of the challenges they face is financial restrictions to expand their operations. They will continue developing and expanding their project after the end of Hanoi Rethink.
Taking the advice from mentors, their next steps include training members, refining their skills, and finessing their products. They will also start proposing grants from investors and develop a new marketing strategy by rethinking the way they brand and promote their project to reach more suitable customers and investors.
In the next five years, Mi Tom Xanh wants to become a social impact business that works with traditional craft villages aiming to produce more delicate and high-quality products while serving the underprivileged.
Colouring Air Quality
A project by Nguyễn Trần Nam Phương, Colouring Air Quality recreates famous buildings in Hanoi (like the Turtle Tower) with recycled materials and a system of LEDs that change colour according to air quality in real-time.
By visualising air quality in colour, the purpose of the project is to arouse public concern about their health, thereby encouraging them to take action proactively to protect the environment. The material intended for the prototype was recycled plastic. But after some experiments, Phương realised it was challenging to shape plastic into manageable pieces without a powerful heat-compress machine. So she changed to cardboard/thin wood. She cut and drilled them manually which was a very time-consuming process. With access to digital fabrication tools at a local Fab Lab, she was able to use the laser cutter to make precise and fast holes in the cardboard/thin wood making it a much more suitable material and the process efficient. A thin fishing line is knotted, and small cut pieces of cardboard are sequenced into the line and repeated for the cover at the top. Depending on the visible area needed on the structure, the pieces needed to be sequenced into a fixed place. Then, it would be all attached to a ceiling.
Digital fabrication helped simplify her work and make her look at problem-solving more creatively. With access to more machines for support, she tried laser cutting and drilling to be very useful for building her prototype.
One of the main areas of research involved finding a way to integrate IQ Air AirVisua quality monitor readings into the physical model. She struggled with finding relevant information initially because of her lack of technical training. But with the support of the Fab Lab and mentors, she was able to narrow down her search to finally find relevant information.
Colouring air quality aims to raise awareness in the community about the environment, by associating it visually with cultural values in Hanoi in particular and Vietnam in general. The old Turtle Tower structure, which represents the beauty of Hanoi, is linked to the current world problem of air pollution. This way, it is not only able to highlight Hanoi patterns with recycled material but also reminds people of how endangered the environment is.
She hopes to be able to continue working on the project. Her aim for this project is to find a way to integrate the coloured light component into the daily life of people.
Links:
Award Ceremony in Hanoi
https://vietnam.un.org/en/205810-sustainable-design-creative-city-hanoi
Project videos
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFPMlpXzrL_zHnqZr4iJCpzqZ-4YNjfvs
