On the eve of the Guangzhou Design Week in 2017, the designer received the sincere invitation from the quartz stone manufacturer LUMINA to let him design their booth. The client proposed the requirements "seeking new forms, breaking old rules" at the beginning of the discussion, which gives designers more freedom as well as stands for greater difficulty and more challenges. Having seen the stones in the factory, the designer came up with an idea that he could make a sculpture with them. Actually, the designer has worked on sculpture, ceramic and decorative arts before. The designer maintains that it’s so exciting that he could have the opportunity to do sculptures after more than twenty years. The integration of pile array art and martial arts into sculptures is inspired by the capture and expression of the dynamic images of the traditional Chinese quincuncial piles. Astronomical phenomena, favorable location, and solar terms are taken into accounts. When they come together, they should work together in such a way as "Beidou Pile" ( Qixing Pile), "Sanxing Pile", “Star Pile", "Tian Gang Pile", "Bagua Pile", “Wuxing Pile", "Jiugong pile "and so on. Quincuncial piles are most suitable for more than two persons to practice. The picture that people encircle together is like plum flower now stretching, now shrinking, which is indefinite while interesting. Except five types fixed, there is no certain type. Namely, the act is natural, changing, but without chaos.

The client proposed the requirements "seeking new forms, breaking old rules" at the beginning of the discussion．The general impression of the booth includes 4 columns, a zenith, and an aisle. What designers thought at the beginning of the designing was how to break these frameworks, and integrated the product into the entire space structure. The product is space, and space is the product. Namely, to expand the infinite possibilities of stone means turning it into a giant sculpture art.

During its 12th year, Guangzhou Design Weekly renovated the numbers of visitors again. From November 27th to 29th, the total number of visitors to the exhibition was 208,533, with a 39% increased form last year. During these three days, “Pile Array” brought an outstanding visual impact effect for the booth, and also attracted a large number of visitors and industry clients, brand owners, as well as many well-known designers to the booth to watch, learn and take photos. The official media of Design Weekly also referred to the booth as a representative booth in the exhibition, which brought great publicity and business opportunities to the booth exhibitors.

Both the way of thinking and expression are broken through the previous booth design of Design Weekly, being the first to make an adventurous breakthrough and trying for the exhibition booth design in the future, and also won extensive compliment.

Team organization: more than 25 full-time members participated in the project; Designer: Joe Chan; Structure: Yang Yongsheng; Marketing: Nicole Yin; CdEF Design Consultant Co., Ltd. Staff play an important part also. The entire staff of the Design Department participated in the construction and removal of technical support, and the Marketing Department took the responsible for the fluent communication with LUMINA Pacific Asia Region Operations Center. Guangzhou Gaoyan exhibition planning Co., Ltd.is responsible for setting up and dismantling the exhibition; Electric Blade Film is responsible for the film production during setting up and the exhibition Mr. Liang Zhigang is responsible for photography; Zheng Jingtian is responsible for kungfu performance during filming and photography.

The main body of the sculpture is made of steel frame. Each column is 50cm * 50cm wide and the length is ranging from 500cm ~ 900cm. All surfaces of the steel frame are sealed with flame-retardant plywood except for the place where the joint is required. After completion, the weight of each column reaches more than 500kg. And with 3-5 of these cylinders in a group, comes a state of mutual dependence whose maximum vertical height attained 700cm. When comes to the second assembly, every cylinder adjusted the angle, then welded at the connection of the columns, blocked the flame plywood, finally affixed to the stone polished so that it does not reveal a trace of the internal structure. The bottom of each column is welded with steel board, fixed by around a piece of about 0.4 to 0.5 square meters in size, up to 1.2cm thick. The bolts were then used to secure the steel plate to the ground. These bottom steel structures were all hidden under a 130 cm * 100 cm * 10 cm high covered black panel flame retardant cleats.

within 3 months, cost 1 million

Few people take stone or steel structures to do the booth. It’s a big challenge for the host has only provided three days to array the booth. Due to the huge sculpture size, stones with a thickness of 12mm are specially made to reduce the overall weight, and the conventional thickness is 20mm. When the bracket assembly, the contact point and the force point must be meticulously calculated. And unless three plunging synchronously work together can the structure be assembled! Then each column weighs 500kg that needs 20 individuals to move. Eleven columns are finally been finished in due time with the joint efforts of all the onsite staff. "Pile array" is first shown up in 2017 Guangzhou Design Week Paolo Exhibition Center B2 / 01 booth. After the Paolo exhibition, it would be transferred to LUMINA Pacific Asia Region Operations Center　building materials exhibition hall to do a permanent display.