Fengjiao Ge MLA 20 Selected for Design Indaba Antenna Program at Dutch Design Week 2020

Posted: September 18, 2020

RISD Global is pleased to announce that Fengjiao Ge MLA 20 has been selected to join the next cohort of emerging designers from across the globe to participate in the Design Indaba “Antenna” platform and program at Dutch Design Week 2020.

Design Indaba is a leading design organization in South Africa, which is committed to design, understood in the broadest sense, for social justice and in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Established in 2017 by Design Indaba, Antenna is a global scan for the world’s next top design graduates. Design Indaba's Antenna program is an annual platform at the Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven to highlight the work of emerging, global design leaders.

Each year, Design Indaba "Antenna" global graduates take to the stage alongside design industry leaders at Dutch Design Week. They prove time and time again that not only can they hold their own, but they are often the source of completely new ideas, unencumbered by tradition or industry standards. Antenna 2020 takes place Oct 17-25, 2020 in a virtual platform.

RISD's selected nominee for Antenna 2020, Fengjiao Ge, is a recent graduate of the Masters in Landscape Architecture program at Rhode Island School of Design. Knowing that the composition of Landscape Architecture crosses paths with multiple disciplines, she devoted herself to a research & design thesis project for which she was selected to present – Flowing Garments – which focuses on excavating new possibilities for garment waste through landscape design.

Other RISD graduates recently selected for Design Indaba's Antenna program at Dutch Design Week in the Netherlands include:

Flowing Garments (project description from Fengjiao Ge)
"This project focuses on creating a localized response to a global problem related to globalization and fast fashion. It considers both the amount of post-production waste and the carbon footprint left by the garment industry’s response to a global desire for novelty and affordabil­ity, and its dependence on cheap labor, minimal envi­ronmental regulations, distributed raw materials and production sites, and markets far removed from places of manufactur­ing. All this has created an unethical and unsustainable supply chain model.

The Flowing Garments project is situated in Bangladesh, a country producing many of these gar­ments, and one paid to receive other countries’ waste. Bangladesh is a densely-populated, developing and deltaic country with major rivers, vast floodplains, low elevation, and a serious lack of raw materials needed for erosion control and building. This project combines issues of waste with issues of local need and empowerment. It aims to transform garment waste into its own supply chain and physical framework to provide a new supply of raw material for construction, embankment stabilization, rural development, locally-controlled industries, and new jobs."

For photos, additional links, and the digital recording, please visit the Event Page

Fengjiao Ge Website
"Flowing Garments" – MLA Thesis Show 2020
Follow Fengjiao on LinkedIn

Antenna 2020

Watch the presentation recording: