What is to 'Design beyond the East & West for the One Child Family'?
I have been contemplating the design brief of the competition for the past two months. Now with only one week to go, I have decided to reflect both my frustration and urgency as part of my design process.
My inability to communicate leads me to analyse the notion of design and competitions.

Upon reflection, I have examined the brief, looked at the abundant resources of information provided and critically studied the past years'
entrants and winning trends. I have even studied the politics of judging and its criteria. I have approached the theme from different perspectives and critical positions and broken the study into different disciplinary forms.

Most importantly I have investigated past, present and experimental housing types; in different contexts and places, and possibly speculative scenarios. I am still in-vial!

But one statement in the brief challenges me to confront the competition, and ultimately myself; both academically and professionally. The role and ethos of designers and their associated service-providers, and our commitment to serve and build for our distressed society and its immediate environment. This neccesitates innovative visions and often humour.

Therefore, I have decided to cast myself in the role of the user, to challenge the competition theme and expand upon the potential outcomes. This approach is not to disembark from the theme, but to offer a reappraisal of the fundamental issues pertaining to design, competition, and on 'how to design beyond the East and West for the One Child Family?'

'What is it 'to design'?
Competitions and design tend to be penalised on what the judges consider 'good design'. There may be two ways of approaching a design competition:

The first: problem solving, where its limits are established by the specific requirements and relevant criteria set; this takes into account economical, functional, technological/material evolution or even symbolical values.

The second is like an 'anti-competition': where the task of problem solving has been reverted to the creation of problems. The intention is to be critical (ethical) and expands upon the given problem, thus giving rise to a new potentiality. Creating new [or ideals] for conceptualization, one which has the ability to challenge, foresee, evolve as a set of values, and even to create problems deliberately for more questions to be challenged or answered; and fostering nomadic engagement, constructive dialogue and invention.

Most winning entries in design competitions tend to lean towards the first category, where the ideal design is what the judges subjectively appreciate; based upon individual aesthetical values.

This to me brings about the fragility and contradiction of 'good design'.

'To design beyond the East & West?'
The first methodology of approach towards design can be discovered through tracing the evolutionary stages of urbanisation; one which is inwards. While the later, seeks a more interactive grander narrative (intellectual) approach, negotiating a space for dialogue and euthenics (self) evidently present in our current geo-political contesting space; one which is 'Rhizome'.

During the 18th & early 19th centuries, the disorganised and problematic simplification of complex issues is immediately visible. The European model of Capitalism and commercialism sees the destruction of the traditional city fabric, disrupting both the urban character and the human behavioural structure, bringing disequilibrium to the notion of 'self' upon 'place'.
The American utilitarian form of a mass-produced, consumption-oriented society gave rise to a 'normalisation' which was fashioned and marketed, in the 20th century, as the 'International Style'. The style propagates 'seriality, functionality, uniformity and cheapness'. This resulted in the further isolation of the individual from the notion of place.
This is the legacy of a Western approach to city planning, resulting from rampant development of the old.
This process is particularly evident towards the late 20th Century and is accelerated by globalization in the 21st century.

Urban Design is part of a framework. Interior Design and Architecture form the habitat for these sad and ironic consequences.

"New node of living in the global information age":
Such situations challenge the traditional Western model of urban living creating a unique and idiosyncratic cultural foundation. In Asia,
conventional definitions of place, interiority and permanence are undermined: architectural space is continually and unconditionally renewed on an almost unpredictable cycle. This limited life-cycle has given rise to a dominant culture of interior design which continually renews the interior spaces of buildings within the city while leaving the envelope untouched or re-furbished. This unsentimental approach to space is intrinsic to the character of the city and fundamental to the social fabric of urbanising cities.

As an extension of this, this theoretical design intends to explore narratively the role of a 'home' ('place') within such a cynical urban-cultural landscape (urban) and its potentiality for developing a spatial model of transition, linking the ideal of 'self' back to 'place' and vice-versa.