Zhejiao Jin

When our country undergoes urbanization and we find ourselves surrounded by unfamiliar faces and buildings, detached from our familiar social circles, how should we go about rebuilding the connections between people?

Zhejiao Jin's design focus is using physical objects to foster community continuation. In a student apartment with frequent resident turnover, Zhejiao takes a two-pronged approach. First, she collects clothes from 79 residents of Building B and stitches them together, symbolizing the physical space that connects the community. Second, she creates an online platform for community members, enabling them to connect and initiate conversations using fabric fragments. This project aims to cultivate shared memories, establish connections, and ensure the ongoing existence of the community.

Jin Zhejiao, a designer/artist from China, completed her undergraduate degree at the Shanghai Institute of Design, China Academy of Art, before coming to the Royal College of Art in the United Kingdom to pursue a master's degree in Product Design. She is committed to using design as a force to drive social change and optimization. Jin is a social field activist who leverages her profound empathic abilities to engage in face-to-face interviews, seeking points of entry for design and facilitating communication. She focuses on the labor inequalities caused by power structures and the increasing alienation of human relationships in contemporary urbanization. She believes that we can achieve "gentle intervention" through design by combining the power of communities and local contexts, creating a design system that continually optimizes and transforms.