We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Chi-Hao Chiang about their original and creative Water Filtration Staircase design work. Chi-Hao Chiang is an award-winning industrial designer, that makes our world a better place with their original water filtration staircase works.
Chi-Hao Chiang ("CC") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work Karst Water Filtration Staircase. Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
CC : We were trying to find a balance and communal community between nature, people, and the environment. The solutional caves then became the inspiration as water plays a key character connecting all the other elements in this environment.
CC : The main focus is to find a way to connect the interaction between behaviors of humans and water. The natural movement of humans and water can form a contrast in this piece.
CC : We would like to keep making this design more practical and feasible, then seek any collaboration to make the design come true and help the environment.
CC : It's a semester-long project, about 12 to 14 weeks.
CC : We started from finding inspiration from various combinations of natural materials. In the end, we decided to combine filtering and flowing together for this project.
CC : No, not yet, but we are happy to discuss collaboration to make this design come true.
CC : It began from designing a kind of staircase for any kind of community, then we thought a community of humans and nature can be possible and interesting.
CC : They would be the professors of this studio course, Swati Piparsania and Ariane Harrison.
CC : It's the residents or visitors on Governor's Island.
CC : It uses the local material to be the filter which is crushed oyster shells. This is more sustainable and linked to the local culture and environment.
CC : The design was inspired by Karst terrain, which is famous for solutional caves, with its cave form and the process that acid rain can act with the crushed oyster shell.
CC : They are Rhino 3D, Fusion 360, Keyshot, and 3D printers to help finish this project from scratch.
CC : I think this is how we connected the local material to the environment and also made it sustainable, in the end having an educational project.
CC : It was my teammate Zhixian Song from Pratt Architecture Department. We worked together by combining perspectives of industrial design and architecture.
CC : I think we all took a part of the responsibility to complete the technology.
CC : We did research about the history of Governor's Island to find inspiration and connections between communities and the environment.
CC : The challenge was to find an elegant way to combine the concepts of flowing and filtering, but also to have space for humans to interact.
CC : I thought this design is good in appearance, meaningful for the environment, and educational in its function.
CC : I think is how to work with other expertise and find a good balance to combine different knowledge seamlessly and smoothly.
CC : No, thank you so much.
