Hsiao-Yun Chu: touring the history of design

Posted Wed, 11/18/2009 - 5:12pm by Matt Itelson

Note: This faculty feature originally appeared in the College of Creative Arts’ events program.

A class taught by Hsiao-Yun Chu is like a world tour of design, from history to product design and development. The Design and Industry assistant professor considers herself a guide—not an expert—leading a fun experience.

Chu’s newest tour involves nearly 1,400 linear feet, the size of R. Buckminster Fuller’s personal archive. This semester, she has arranged for students in a graphic design class to engage in a typesetting project of Fuller’s 23,000-word Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, on the heels of Chu’s new book, “New Views on R. Buckminster Fuller” (Stanford University Press).

As the Fuller archive’s assistant curator while attending Stanford, Chu grew interested in Fuller’s self-taught, innovative design and utopian, visionary viewpoints. Fuller’s geo-dome, she notes, came decades before today’s green movement.

To Chu, design is about people more than the products. One of her class projects brings students to San Francisco teahouses. “Tea is significant in so many cultures,” she says. “It involves taste and rituals but also the shape of the cup and how it is decorated.

“When you design something, you want it to have meaning to the people who use it,” Chu adds. “The relationship to that object can be very rich.”