Yu Kai Chen

Category: Design*

Competitions: Taiwan Region

This project explores rawhide as an active, living material through the act of inflation. By introducing air as a formative force, rawhide expands, stretches, and holds tension, producing voluminous forms that exist between softness and structure. Inflation is employed not simply as a technical process, but as an expressive gesture that dissolves the conventional hierarchy between material, surface, and support. Referencing the human body, the inflated forms echo flesh under pressure—bulging, weighted, and resilient. In this context, fullness is reframed as a site of beauty, presence, and vitality rather than excess. The rawhide’s elasticity allows bodily qualities to be translated into spatial form, transforming tension and expansion into a sculptural language. Situated between sculpture and furniture, the work blurs distinctions between the natural and the fabricated, the organic and the industrial, the soft and the rigid. Through inflation, the project proposes an alternative design vocabulary—one that embraces corporeality, instability, and material responsiveness as fundamental aesthetic values.

Category: Design*

Competitions: Taiwan Region

This lighting project reinterprets rawhide, once used in Taiwanese shadow puppetry, by exploring tension as a shaping force. The rawhide—a by-product of the meat industry—is stretched and fixed to reveal slender, organic curves. Inspired by contemporary pressures around slimness and appearance anxiety, the form captures the fragile balance between delicacy and resilience. A brass structure supports the skin, with its warm metallic tone resonating with the rawhide’s natural hues. Through this interplay of material, structure, and societal reflection, the piece offers a renewed perspective on tradition and modern identity.

Category: Design*

Competitions: Taiwan Region

This furniture project reimagines rawhide, historically used in Taiwanese shadow puppetry and drums, through air-inflated shaping. Originally a by-product of the meat industry, rawhide expands under internal pressure to form voluminous, organic structures. Inspired by the positive rethinking of body image and the celebration of fullness, the design embraces generous curves shaped by material tension. It resists societal stigma toward body size, offering a contemporary reinterpretation of traditional materials. In doing so, the piece invites a broader appreciation of diverse forms, both in design and in society.