Projects
Writing
Information
- Introduction
- The Capacity of Form
- Designed Form as Furniture
- The Relational Field of Form
- The Reconciliation of Form and Function
- Complex Form in Harmonization
- Restraint and Richness
Complex Form in Harmonization: Continued - Discerning Proportion
- Reflection on Contemporary Design
2023-2025
- What is Design?
- Problematic Design of Contemporary Era
- The Timeless Good Design
- Reflection on the Role of Design in our Historic Moment
-2023
In Chinese, the character 形 (xíng) has a distinctive and expressive capacity. Depending on context, it can denote multiple meanings that are closely related. It refers to structure (结构 jiégòu), perceptible outline (形状 xíngzhuàng), spatial presence (形体 xíngti), and the rhythm or posture through which a thing asserts itself (形态 xíngtài). It is not only what is seen, but how something exists, moves, and is felt. While the English word form approaches this meaning, it is often understood as visible shape rather than as a unified condition.
When objects are understood not merely as appearance but as presence, they do more than visually occupy space. They condition the relations that emerge around them: orientation, gesture, movement, distance, and attention. In contemporary material discourse, this capacity for matter to affect its surroundings is often discussed through the notion of agency. Here, agency does not imply consciousness or intention, but the ability of object and material to organize experience, posture, movement, and spatial awareness. Through the lens of 形 (xíng), an object’s agency lies in the way its form, spatial presence, and rhythm organize experience.
If 形 (xíng) is the condition through which presence becomes perceptible, then the question becomes: how can design construct such presence? geometry enters this question as a tool of analysis. It does not appear here only as a mathematical system, nor as a narrow reference to measurable shapes such as circles and squares. Rather, geometry offers a means of clarifying relationships: between mass and void, curve and edge, proportion and scale, object and body. Through geometry, material can be composed, stabilized, and made perceptible as something more than mere visuals. It helps us understand a structure of relations through which material presence can be sensed.
This understanding of 形 (xíng) does not yet define a method, but it aims to establish a position: form is not merely something to be seen or used, but a material and spatial condition through which presence is sensed, felt, and inhabited. Geometry will later act as the language through which this condition is organized; here, however, the first task is to perhaps emphasize the importance and potential of form, and how an object by its form begins to participate in the world around it.