Project Details

General Information

The Borrowing Project redefines exhibition design as a circular practice. Instead of building disposable booths, we borrowed standard construction materials—wood planks, bricks, and metal pipes—from local vendors and returned them after the exhibition. These materials were minimally altered and assembled using non-destructive methods: timber bundles became structural bases; metal tubes formed seating frames; foam offcuts were repurposed as cushions. Display panels and tables were built from standard-size boards (3x6, 4x8) joined with screws and Velcro, ensuring reversibility without cutting or gluing.

The project debuted at YODEX 2024, Taiwan’s largest student design exhibition, under the theme “Beyond Sustainability.” We collaborated with students, vendors, builders, and craftspeople to develop a modular, low-waste spatial system. Each design decision prioritized material return, logistical simplicity, and post-use value. Visitors engaged with the space both physically and conceptually, reconsidering the life cycle and ownership of materials.

By reframing temporary structures as part of a material circulation system, the project promotes a sustainable model of spatial production grounded in responsibility rather than consumption. It fosters harmony between people, society, and the environment by aligning design with everyday ecological logic and local industrial capacity.

Creative Solution (Creativity/Innovation)

We approached exhibition design as logistical choreography. Instead of customizing new materials, we reverse engineered the design based on what could be borrowed and returned without alteration. Raw timber bundles served as plinths, and tool-less connections were made with Velcro and screws. Standard shipping and construction components were recontextualized as spatial elements, without cutting, gluing, or permanent fixtures. Metal tubes borrowed from a furniture factory, originally intended as table legs, were bundled to form temporary chairs and later returned. This reframed design not as transformation, but as temporary stewardship: maximizing reuse, minimizing intervention, and reducing post-use waste through logistical precision.

Social Impact (Inspiration/Impact)

The project proves that circular construction can be aesthetically compelling, structurally effective, and economically feasible. It diverted nearly all wood waste from a major design exhibition, offering a replicable model for low-impact event infrastructure. By engaging students, builders, and the public, it raised awareness of material responsibility and temporary architecture’s long-term consequences. Industry collaboration created a feedback loop between production and reuse, reinforcing the cultural relevance of circularity. Recognized by multiple design award nominations, the project expanded influence and sparked discourse on long-term thinking in temporary space design. This shift in lifecycle awareness has rippled across education, design, and procurement.

Participation/Cooperation

We collaborated with sawmills, furniture factories, construction and interior contractors, landscape firms, material vendors, and student teams. Each partner shaped the borrow-return system by ensuring their materials or methods could circulate, enabling cross-sector coordination and shared accountability.

Vision for the Future

The project proposes a universal logic for temporary architecture based on borrow-return systems. It’s scalable across global contexts, including exhibitions, festivals, and pavilions, and adaptable to local material markets. It also encourages designers to integrate logistics, ethics, and systems thinking into creative practice, laying the foundation for a new material culture grounded in responsibility, not ownership. By doing so, it challenges prevailing consumption habits in the building materials supply chain, as well as the pervasive issue of short-term, single-use waste in exhibition spaces.