Taiwan’s Golden Pin awards focus on products for the global Chinese community

There are dozens of design awards around the world, but Taiwan’s Golden Pin strays from the pack in one important way, by considering how design serves the world’s ethnic Chinese community. That’s the explicit focus of the Golden Pin Concept Design Award, which is being given this year for the first time to conceptual products that serve the unique needs of Chinese people.

“Philosophies, ideologies, principles and symbolism, often ancient in origin, are an integral component of modern huaren societies,” reads the award’s official preamble. “And yet the role the huaren world plays in shaping the design of everyday objects remains largely unexplored.”

International designers have taken notice: Golden Pin received 2,384 entries from 17 countries around the world. These have been whittled down to 45 finalists from Taiwan and the mainland. Lee Weilang, creative director of Taiwan’s Afterain Design Studio and one of the award’s judges, says this is because non-Chinese designers have a hard time grasping the idea of zhong guan, or Chinese spirit. “This concept is already difficult for huaren people to grasp. For people from outside the huaren group, it’s likely even harder,” he says.

Finalists include Link Hanger by Jia-jin Lin, who reinterpreted traditional Taiwanese window frames to create an interlocking clothes hanger, and Yan Shi Cai Yao, a project by the Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology to create individually packaged Chinese medicine blends. China Central Academy of Fine Arts was shortlisted for  A Shining White Orb of the Full Moon, a hotel based on an ancient poem by Li Bai.

But huaren design isn’t limited to the Concept Design Awards: the concept also informs many of the 565 winners of Golden Pin’s long-established Design Mark awards for completed products, architecture and graphic design.