Dialogue@ZJU: With the winning team of the Most Promising Design award in the BRIDGE Sustainable Design Action

[Editor’s note: The BRIDGE Design Week 2021 wrapped up in Zhejiang University on Sept 11, with 10 teams of students from 17 universities around the world presenting their design proposals to help achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). Team Six “200%” won the Most Promising Design award with their proposal “GO ON”. What’s special about their design? ZHANG Hongbo, the team leader, shared his understanding of SDGs and the concept behind their design.]

Q1: Could you use your own words to describe your thoughts about sustainable development?

Innovation or concept innovation. It’s necessary for us to update our idea or concept in order to keep up with the social development.

Q2: What’s special about your design?

The most special thing in our design project is that we can combine the modernization with some traditional culture. With the rapid progress of the economy, the traditional culture development has been hindered a lot. For example, lots of craftspeople in some minority nationalities cannot earn a living by the traditional skill because there’s a gap between the modern and traditional culture. So we want to bridge the gap by our design thinking and practice. 

Q3: What’s the concept behind your design? What do you want to convey?

We name our design concept “GO ON”. I think there are two aspects. For the first, we want to mean “start”. We create or design a new platform for all of the young people, giving them a chance to re-understand the charm of the traditional culture. Next, GO ON means “continue”. We want, like, the craftspeople can continue earning a life by their traditional culture. And also, they can continue to be respected and recognized by the society. 

Q4: What is the most difficult part during your designs?

The most difficult thing is how to cooperate or communicate with all of online friends. Actually, our main topic is about the decent work and economic growth. It's really a big topic, so it's really hard for us to minimize the topic as small as possible, because we could not solve everyone's employment opportunity. So we focus on how to give more decent work to some traditional craftspeople.

Q5: What is your vision for the Sustainable Development Goals？

I think it's a big topic. In my opinion, I think we can divide it into two parts. The first thing is how to develop. And the most important thing is how to make it more sustainable. So I think we need not only focus on how to develop as fast as possible, but also consider deeply how to develop, based on our national condition or nationality characteristic. I think it's the key to the long-term development or the sustainable development.