Melamine Factory

I've went on a tour with my co-worker to what my boss called "the largest melamine factory in China" this week. For those who only known of Melamine as the harmful substance used in the baby formula scandal last year, it have been used to make useful products like kitchen countertops and tablewares for decades. It's only harmful when it gets into your bloodstream.





A bag of Melamine. Safe as long as it doesn't get into your bloodstream.

A factory worker and the high pressure compression molding m
achine.

The buffing station.

Shenzhen Architectures

People don't usually associate Shenzhen with great architectures and urban planning, but when I took a walk around the Futian district after the Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair, it's actually not bad. I can see that the district is at its early stages, but at least the framework is there.

Rem Koohaus' Shenzhen Stock Exchange. His next flaming archite
cture stunt?

Shenzhen City Hall. I haven't been to the Tiananmen Square, but this structure should be comparable to it in size.

























Coco Park. Looks like the equivalent of Elements in Kowloon, but missing the view and land value.

Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair

I had a chance to go to the Shenzhen Hi-Tech Fair last week. I didn't have enough time to walk through the whole show, but I got to see some cool stuff.

3D TV
I remembered the first time I went into a 3D theater back when I was 10 or so at Disney. Though I didn't really like the short movie, it was an immersive experience. After so many years, it wasn't much of a surprise to see the technology getting applied onto televisions. The image quality was good. I did see a bit of misalignment in the video, which should be solved with a bit of adjustment. They showed it on a projector instead of a TV, but I guess they did it to give people a more immersive experience.

Smart Home
I've done a bit of research on it during university, so I know what it was about. Most of the smart technologies shown at the booth was based on the idea that you can control the lights, HVAC system, window blinds, and other electronic appliances remotely. Nothing groundbreaking, but they were the only exhibitors showing such technology.

Lasers
For some reason, I noticed a lot of exhibitors showing laser cutting and etching technologies at various scales. Though I haven't seen the machines first hand before, I've certainly seen a lot of examples of products on the market that have used the technology. It certainly does a good job at attracting people's attention.

Objectified DVD Arrived

After much anticipation, my copy of Objectified DVD finally arrived a few weeks ago. It was packed inside of a cardboard mailer which was just two pieces of cardboard that are glued at the edges. Underwhelming, but it does the job with little impact to the environment.

I was most interested to see the part with Jonathan Ive where he talked about how a large part of designing the Macbooks was on designing the process. They actually spent a lot of time designing the fixtures that secure the unibody in the manufacturing process.

Dieter Ram's part was special in that his words added a lot of weight to the profession by listing out the principals of good design. Kind of sad that he's not designing much nowadays. Frank Gehry is several years older than him and he's still designing.

I also enjoyed Karim Rashid's part where he challenged people to design objects that reflect the moment we live in.

Chris Bangle and Rob Walker's part was a bit of a surprise to me in that I don't know much of their background, but the things they've said were quite interesting. Especially Chris' explanation of how cars are like frozen sculptures that are put into movement by the people who drive them.