Good afternoon, honourable guests, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a real pleasure for me to participate in preparing in this year's workshop entitled "I am home!" Tataiima!

Thanks for the hardworks from the colleague in the Nagoya design center,
participants of this year's workshop from Japan and oversea,
will have a chance to visit a total of 15 local homes.
It will surely be an enlightening and wonderful experience to know more about the real home living environment of Japanese households,
to share their idea on daily living, their commentary on design objects,
and their general as well as specific views on today's consummer society and information age. For the participants from overseas,
it will be a precious experience of cultural exchange.

Everybody has a home, some may have more than one.

A place called Home is not only a physical space where one carry out his or her daily activities, but also a phycological space of personal and collective memory.
I'm from Hong Kong. I borned and grown up in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is my home.

My parent come to Hong Kong as immigrant from China some fifty years ago because of the war.
First they treated Hong Kong as a temporary home but eventually they settled down and raised their family. HK became their, and our permanant home.
In the past forty years, our family move 4 times to different houses, hoping to have better living environment.
We even emigrant to Canada for a while before 1997 when HK is handed over to China.
But we finally came back, still treating HK as our Home.
From this angle, Home is a concept on the move, flexible and adaptable,
a key character of HK people.

One day when I got a chance to look back at what I've been doing in the past 15 years after my graduation from University,
I suddenly realized all my works, no matter it is design work, illustration and comix work, or my essay writing, are all focus on, and relate to the issue and idea of home, conciously or uconciously.

Today I would like to take a chance to share this experience with our guests here.

Since 1997, I started a writing and photo documentary project called "Home, Chinese Home".

In the past 7 years, I have visited more than one hudred different homes in HK, Taiwan and Mainland China.
A lot of the home I pay visit belongs to my old friends, old school mates and working colleague, but some are new friends introduced by friends.

Every time I bring along a photographer to take pictures of the home environment,
and I will do a write up on this home interview and the writing and the photos first became a regular column in magazines in HK, Taiwan, and Mainland China, and later collected into books.

I must say that I do not treat this home interviews as a regular journalistic job, or an academic field work or research.
I really having a good time in all these homes, from casual chat on daily odds and ends to serious political, economical and culture discussion, always with a light lunch, or a heavy dinner, with a lot of drinks, laughters and even tears.

Here you can see a home in HK, which belongs to a good friend of mine, a famous advertising profession and a film director,
who is very very acticulate on colour, texture, lighting, and he treats every corner of his home as sort of art installation.
Some of our friends will laugh at him, saying that he is living in his beautifully dome TV commercial, but I am sure he really really enjoys it.

You also see here is a friend from Taiwan, an established Chinese painting artist who lives with his family---mother, wifer and two sons.
He is totally into the ways our ancient Chinese intellectuals the poets and the painters' lead their life.
So he is somehow living in the past, with all the antique pictures, household objects, and the wonderful garden.
You cannot believe that just outside the garden wall is the most busy street in Taipei city.

Here you can see another friend of mine from Mainland China.
An upcoming artist who is a single father living with his two kids in the outskirt artist village in Beijing.
This friend is from a farmer's family, became a self-taught artist and struggle all his way to Beijing to get closer to a better artistic opportunity.
I am deeply moved by his living will power and his artistic direction.
We became good friends and drank so much everytime we meet up.

To me, to visit a home is first out of curiousity.
You just want to learn more about how the others live their lives.
After a while you find that there is not a single life style, everybody incluing yourself has a unique way of living.
This strongly remind us so called design professionals, don't push a single and fix life style to the users. What we need is different choices.
And after all this year carrying htis stell continuing project, I think I learn to become more open-minded and generous, and realize that the project itself is a personal and collective memory of the home living environment of our contemporary Chinese society and our time.

Home is about people, no matter it is of a single person, or a big family with different generation.
But we will also notice that home is about objects, design objects and enormous objects.
How we obtain them, storing them, using them, arranging and displaying them, and finally destroy and discard them?
All the objects around us are not just still lifes.
From 2002, I started another writing project named "design / myself".
It is personal journal on design and non design objects, designers, global and local design events and trends.
It is a kind of commentary and criticism on our non-stop consumming practise and a reminder of how we can have a better relationship with all the objects.

The writing first appeared as a magazine column with my own drawing illustration.
After a while when they are collected and re-edited as a book,
I arrange all the objects mentioned in the writing on the floor of my home and also my workshop, asked a photographer to take pictues of them.

Here you can see some photos shoot from the 2 books
illustrating an essay about the designer Marc Newson, the fashion brand Dior Homme, this one concerning Contemporary Indian Design, with Beijing stories and Shanghai experience.

Furthermore the same structure apply to a recent book focusing only on Italian objects,
like once fashion icon Romeo Gigli, Benetton and Fabica, the sucessful brand building of Prada, as well as the local go global Pasta experience.

Objects objects objects, we cannot get away from them so we used a proper attitude to deal with them.
Apart from writing about them, I was once invovled in running two design retail stores, one called "Here" in HK and one called "Dish" in Taipei.
Being the mechardizer and image director of the shops, I became the insider of the businese, give me another angle to look at objects in a complicated love and hate relationship.

To me, home living must be a total living experience.
We sleep, we play, we work and we eat in our home, every moment and every detail counts. Being a food lover and an amature cook, I am very much like home cooking.
So last year I make another book on my home cooking practice.
The book was named "half-full", because I believe that being half full is not only a healthy, body condition, but you can have room to try more delicious thing round the next corner.
So in the book I included 32 receipts all home made and taking pictures in my home kitchen. Whether they are Italian pasta which I love so much, or Italian dessert like Tiramisu showing here or Shanghaiese rice with vegetable and hams I learn to prepare from my grandma or Indoesian salad Gadogado my mother used to prepare for my grandfather.
Food is not only about taste, it is about memory.
You may forgot what you had eaten in the hundred and thousand of restaurants outside,
but you will never forget most simple but most delicious food eaten in your home.
Here you can also see some cooking pages I ded regularly for newspaper couumn, which focus more on healthy, organic slow food.

I always use my book to encourage my friends who are very successful in their profession but cannot even fry an egg in their designer kitchen,
that a pair of stupid hands like me can feel good in the kitchen, that means everybody can enjoy themselves in the home kitchen, provided that you are willing to spend some more time and use not only your hands but our heart.

Apart from the above writing projects, the other side of me, being an illustrator and a comix artist, I spent my rest of time in drawing and story telling.
And it happens so naturally to me that, then contents of the many stories are also about home, may it be the real home here, or the sureal home outthere.

Here you can see one of my comix project called OutThere.
It is a more personal, imaginative and absurd home environment,
you can try out one night stand there, you can imprison your lover there,
you will find your lover missing in your closet after making love,
you are unable to deliver a love letter in the post office near your home,
strange stories go on and on ....

Here also shown a short stories collection call 3721,
in Chinese saying that mean no matter what, just do it.
The first story in the book is about a funiture show room, when the door close after a busy businese day, some people will come back through another door to spend their night here,
they really treat this as their temporary ideal home.
Different rooms have different stories, happy or sad, and when the other day come,
all of them leave the show room and back to their normal life.

Again in another comix project I did years ago called "Love Kills".
It's more like a situation comedy related to the human and non human love and hate relationship.
Stories ran around 4 pairs of couples, one straight, one gay, one lesbien and a baby boy with his teddy bear.
Most of the day to day stories are happen in their home environment,
home is again a stage of drama and life.

Before we came to the end of this presentation.
I would kike to share one more project I did years ago.
It is a book of my travel writing and photography, call "out of the ordinary".
I believe that home is not a fixed settled physical space.
We Chinese have an old saying called "make yourself at home in the 4 seas",
that means one has to be adventurous, to be brave , to be humble as well as generous,
a good travel experience is a wonderful home experience.
In this ever expanding world call home, you need to open yourself up,
use all your senses to feel, to touch, to smell and to taste.

Long long time ago, a philosopher said that "I think therefore I am".
Years later an artist said that "I shop therefore I am".
May be today I dare to add that, "I'm home therefore I am".

If every of us live out our simple and ordinary home experience with our heart,
the following English saying is so true that "home is where the heart is".

Thank you very much.

Introduction: independent contextual designer since 1999 with a studio based in Eindhoven in the Netherlands specialized in Trend, Concept & Design. 'My strong believe is that prejudice is caused by a lack of information and interest. As a designer I want to trigger the interest of others through my projects and give information, people otherwise might not be interested in. This way I can contribute to a better world and that's what I think my duty, as a Contextual Designer should be'.

One of the main goals of the workshop is the cultural exchange. For both the Japanese as well as the foreign participants it is very valuable to become aware of your own cultural `luggage` and how it is affecting you. This awareness grows while being in another culture or sharing your own culture with others. The things that always have been there are now noticed and valued through different eyes. This is interesting for both the foreign as well as the Japanese participants. The unspoken rules of society, family life and individual space are challenged when cultures meet.

During the time of the workshop it is not only extremely interesting for the foreign participants to experience the unique culture of Japan in all its aspects; also for the Japanese participants it will be interesting to gain similar awareness just by sharing, discussing and observing their own culture with foreigners. The way foreigners perceive or interpret the Japanese culture might raise some questions. I think this is particularly the case for the foreign participants while they are staying with the Japanese host-families and when we will visit all the Japanese homes in the coming week. The Japanese participants will realize that things that appear to be normal for them, as logical as it might seem, might not be normal for outsiders.

This already starts when entering a Japanese house with the habit of taking of your shoes. Though it seems a very logical thing to do, this is not a common habit in a lot of countries around the world. From a designers point of view I found Japan extremely innovative in product design. Many will think of the well designed electronic equipment when I use the word innovative, but I am actually referring to a more basic element in the more private part of the house, to be specific: the Japanese western style toilet.

This toilet is often equipped with a fountain on top of it. Once you flush the toilet you can wash your hands at the same time. This not only safes water, but also space which is precious in Japanese city life. One might state that this design even resembles the mentality of Japanese like the respect for nature and therefore environmental awareness being a logical integration in Japanese way of thinking; also the efficiency level of a lot of products resemble the Japanese way of dealing with limited space. A good example of this can be seen in the small picture book called Tokyo Living. For the workshop, due to the limited time, unfortunately we will just have to focus on the more visible part of home living rather than this anthropological or even philosophical part. It will be mostly about observation and communication with the users. Also it might be important to mention we want to focus more on the interaction with the things that surround them in their house rather than the decoration of the houses or its interior design.

A similar project that might be interesting to mention is a project initiated by the German Artist Pia Lanzing. In 2001 she actively included the inhabitants of a newly developed satellite town in the conception of her project `This is the way we live`. She studied how significant individual homes can be a mirror of personality, life style and prevailing social conditions. A visual result of this project was the magazine `Schones Wohnen in der Messestadt Riem` (Beautiful Home Living in Riem), which uses formal elements of typical home decorating magazines, but yet the content being the everyday reality of the residents in this trade-fair town. The magazine combines the attractive image and the aesthetic delight of a commercial home decorating magazine together with real living situations. The publication inevitably upgrades the residents` way of life; its purpose was to promote their identity with their city region, their taste of gracious living and an exchange of ideas on the subject.

The living environment being the mirror of some ones personality. Julia-san from IDCN and I have known each other for quite some years now, yet she was very surprised by the unrevealed romantic part of me, which is expressed in my house decoration, particularly my bedroom. Julia-san assumed by knowing my work, personal appearance and personality she knew a lot about me. Yet the pictures of my house surprised her. I also remember having an art teacher in the US who believed in paying house visits while meeting the parents of his students, because it revealed so much more than what he could see from the students while teaching in class.

Before the participants arrived in Nagoya they already had to complete some homework. Everyone was asked to make a visual presentation of their living environment. As an introduction to the workshop I want to show you my Dutch home.

This morning we watched the presentation of all the homes of the participants. The cultural differences between the house of the foreigners, but also the many differences that can be found between the Japanese houses open up a whole new world of looking at a culture.

Craig from the USA, currently living in Italy talked about the differences between Italian homes and his reference which he has on home living in the USA. He also explained a lot of the objects in his Italian house that were somehow related to food or foodpreparing, which plays an important part in Italian daily life. For example the coffeepot on the stove to make espresso or the cupboard where the grappa (drink from skin of grapes) is riping for a few months before its ready to be consumed. These objects are also the mirror of the cultural values.

I hope this workshop will be an eye-opener for both the foreign as well as the Japanese participants, and that they will become more aware of their own cultural luggage.