The Chairman of Taiwan Design Center (TDC), Mr. Chi-Yi Chang was named as the newest Board of Directors for World Design Organization (WDO) in 2019-2021. Mr. Chang is the fourth person that was named in this title after TDC’s Chief Advisor Mr. Tony Chang, NOVA DESIGN General Manager Mr. Wen-Ling Chen, and Compal Electronics’ Senior VP Mr. ShiKuan Chen. The nominees for this year’s election were very fierce with 15 outstanding people from the USA, France, Japan, Austria, Korea etc. The new president-elect is David Kusuma from Tupperware Brands Corp, other boards elected are Anne Asensio from Dassault Systemes, Pradyumna Vya from Confederation of Indian Industry, Makiko Tsumura from Japan Institute of Design Promotion, and Eray Sertac Ersayin from Industrial Designers Society of Turkey etc.
The City of Hyderabad (India) has been selected to host the 31st WDO World Design Assembly on 11-12 October 2019. There were more than 100 design organizations, schools, and provide corporations attended this meeting. The theme of the meeting is Humanizing Design, which has close relationship with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, and provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. Since last decade, TDC co-organized the 2011 IDA Congress with WDO and has worked closely with WDO since winning the bid for World Design Capital Taipei 2016. Taiwan already became a country using design for city development, social innovation, and circular design.
TDC is undergoing a transformation to become the “Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI)”, which will focus its research in three strategic areas: “design for public sector”, “industrial innovation”, and “social innovation”. The UN’s 17 SDGs cover everything from eliminating poverty to forging partnerships to realizing the goals, and worldwide collaboration is the key that will ensure success. Collaboration means cross-disciplinary integration in which design intrinsically plays a pivotal role. We hope by becoming the Board of Directors of WDO, we can give more opportunity for our society and industry to have extra value because of design, to have our designers join more local and international projects and show their enthusiasm and ability for social issues. With Mr. Chang becomes the new Board of Directors with WDO, our voice in Taiwan will surely be heard by others and we wish for collaboration to build up a better life for human beings.
