Qing Lu 陆庆

Chessboard, Scrolls, Wooden installation

Prospects & Piety is a real-world activist project that allows university students to develop their self-awareness, explore their future career possibilities and predict unexpected futures, and initiate a critical discussion on purposeless involution and the criteria for achieving self-value in life. Chinese university students, having undergone the competitive "involution" of the college entrance exams, are gradually led by the "involution" of society into a directionless "involution" to reach the "standard of success" before they have a sufficient understanding of themselves.

This project uses the I Ching to guide attitudes in the world through the most loathsome yet familiar test, exploring oneself and one's surroundings, provoking communication, moving from class to dormitory to the whole campus, stimulating exploration and endogenous motivation, planning for the future and finding one's way in the whirlwind of the real world.

I am studying Design Products at RCA London, after I graduated with a BA in Industrial Design (furniture pathway) from Nanjin Forestry University and a Graduate Diploma programme in RCA.

The processes of exploring are the primary motivation for designing products. Designing I often compare the contemporary and the historical to find the cultural source of human behaviour. I am interested in how the commonality of humanity and furniture closely relates to people’s life, so during the study of furniture, I gradually got used to observing human behaviour. That influenced my product design exploration; I subconsciously observing human habits and studying them in relationship with history and culture.

Product design is more like a tool for me to understand humans. Instead of serving people or solving problems, it also helps people to understand humans themselves. So when I face the future, I believe we could find the answer by exploring the root of humans. RCA has an atmosphere with different cultures and thoughts; with this, I updated my cognitions constantly and developed my design identity in product design.