Nowadays, Air pollution is a huge issue in China. It causes serious smoggy weather, especially in Beijing, the capital city of China. According to China Daily, there was one smoggy day per week in 2013 on average. The main hazardous substance in smog is PM 2.5. It could goes directly into the human’s respiratory tract and causes severe respiratory diseases such as asthma and lung cancer. Approximately 350,000 people die every year because of the smog. Beijing government realized how serious this issue is and announced they would spend 300 billion dollars to curb air pollution in early 2013. But the irony is that the air quality of Beijing did not change in the past two years and it even became worse. People start questioning where did the money goes and how they spent the money.

 

Weiyi and I was went through three different stages (research, brainstorm and mock up), produce four concepts to raises awareness of the air pollution issue and the value of of fresh air.

 

 

This the very first idea we came up with. The idea is to do a demonstration of how the particulate matter damages the human’s respiratory system. Put a big model of the human upper body on the square, people could see some small balls which represent the particulate matter constantly go in to the respiratory tract, and they could actually see the colour of the lung changes, that means the person is becoming unhealthy. The goal of this event design is raising the awareness what the particulate matter is and how it damages the respiratory system. 

The gauze mask has become the symbol of people’s anger and fear of the smog. We tried to focus on the design that relate to this symbol. Our second idea is very simple. Let the skyscrapers “wear” gauze masks. It could raise huge awareness that everyone on the street could see those huge masks. It seems that the building also feel outraged about the bad air quality in Beijing.

After doing all the research, we realized that the ultimate solution of air pollution is to let all the people feel accountable for this issue, the government would never solve this problem if all the people refuse to change their life style (e.g., overuse of their cars). Starting from the young generation is the best way to achieve that. So we started do a game design that target the children from age 9 to 16. This game is called Smog Cleaner. In this game, the player could control a piece of cloud. The goal of this game is to absorb as much as good matter that is released from the trees and dodge the black matter that is released from the car’s exhaust pipe. Children could learn how the exhaust gas pollutes the air and at the same time they have fun while playing this game.

We designed a series of masks that have different emoticons on them. Happy face, sad face and angry face are the three emoticons. The goal of this design is to let people choose the mask they want to wear in response to the different severity of air pollution. Imaging that thousands of people walk on the street with angry-face masks in a smoggy day. That could show the people’s anger on the bad air pollution they have to suffer and the intransparency of the government’s huge investment on curbing air pollution. It would raise huge awareness of the issue and appeal to the government to take more powerful anti-pollution measures and disclose the details of how they spent the money.

 

- This project promotes social change. The mask design encourages people to do something in response to the government’s incompetence.
- This project raises awareness of the air pollution issue and the value of of fresh air.
- This project has both political trait and aesthetic trait. It reveals and contests existing configurations—The government’s deception and delay on anti-pollution investment.
- Consensus: Bad air quality and the government’s incompetence.
- Dissensus: People have the right to know the detail of government’s investment and the freedom of expressing their anger on smoggy weather and the government’s incompetence.