Kane Yanagawa, a professor of architecture at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, invited by Prof. Yen-Ting Cho from the Institute of Creative Industries Design (ICID) to give a talk on the morning of October 28 at ICID Open Space.

In the talk, Yanagawa introduced the ideas about digital fabrication to the students. He also talked about the maker movement, explaining how these things affect social change.

Yanagawa said, “I’ve been in the university for about two years, and my background is architecture. I studied architecture in the States, and then I spent a few years working at Zaha Hadid Architects in London and as well as in Los Angeles and New York,”

He also noted, architectural design not only evolves from research, innovation, collaboration and society, but equally contributes to the advancement of each of these core components.

Yanagawa initiated a design studio called sKY_Associative at the Department of Architecture in NCKU.

According to Yanagawa, the studio is founded with a focus in design and research devoted to exploring the potentials of computation and digital fabrication in art and architecture.

Cho said, this is the first talk of a course called Introduction to Creative Industries which provides an excellent opportunity for the new ICID students to explore different perspectives of the creative industries in their first semester.

Yanagawa’s talk provides students with perfect examples of how the digital maker movement can create social transformation, said Cho.

PhD student Isabelle Yang attending the talk to learn more about creative industries said, "My background is in museology and I'm familiar with the industrialization. It's really fresh to join the discussion from another perspective."

"The interdisciplinary interaction between makers and architecture is interesting," said Yang.