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I am not involved in MayDE anymore hence I do not post to this blog but I am leaving it live as a resource.

The Mayde Team

The Mayde team captured at the opeing event. On the far left seated in Ms Liping Liu, manager of the Mayde centre. David Hawkins is standing on the far right and Roger Bateman directly in the centre of the back row.

Launch of Mayde Design Brief #1

Last week saw the launch of the very first design project which is being undertaken by 3rd year Unitec Product Design students and the Mayde staff in Guanzhou.
Using both primary and secondary research generated in Auckland, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou the young designers are working on designs for home furniture and furnishing. It is expected that the results of this exploratory project will be shown in August 2007 within the Mayde centre Guangzhou.
The brief is centred around new product development for Chinese manufacturers and an exhibition of the project results will coincide with other Mayde exhibtions, events and a conference which will attract participation from some of the largest furniture manufacturers from in and around Guangzhou .
Of course, this blog will be displaying some of the on going results from this project so log on when ever you wish to and see what's going on.

Mayde opening

On the 16th March Mayde www.mayde.cn officially opened its doors via a day long design seminar called 'Growth by Design', a joint exhibition of selected NZ and CH 3D design and a networking evening. The opening was timed to coincide with 2 major furnishing trade fairs taking place in and around Guangzhou thus making it easy for visitors to 'to and fro' between events.
From NZ, Essenze www.essenze.co.nz was invited by Mayde to provide a mixed exhibition selected from their stable of NZ designers. From CH, Mayland drew together an exhibition of both established and young designers. The opening was generously supported by NZTE and received huge financial investment from Mayland www.worldhomexpo.com
Speakers at the day long seminar were: Daniel Charney Platform 10 RCA London www.rca.ac.uk , Roberto Feo Platform 10 RCA London/ El Ultimo Grito www.elultimogrito.co.uk , Dr David Hawkins Unitec NZ/Mayde, Roger Bateman Unitec NZ/Mayde, Dan Su Head of Environmental Design Quighua University, Qun Sun CASA magazine, Dr Zuoxin Lin professor at Beijing Forestry University/President of Shanghai Jiazhija Furniture Ltd.

Downloads and more information on the seminar will be available on the Mayde website once it is fully constructed.

The event was very well attended with representatives from Chinese and NZ government, architects, designers, manufacturers, specifiers, media, oem's, academics etc participating for the whole day.

The event was closed late in the evening with a dinner held in the nearby Grand Hotel. The Exhibitions ran on for the remainder of the week.

Mayde VI

The design of the Mayde VI was entrusted to two 2006 Unitec Design graduates Terence Tsang and Li Zhang. Once initial designs had been drawn up and presented Unitec and Mayland decide to go with a concept by Terence.

Over the following 2 months Terence worked with David, Roger and Guangzhou based Mayde Centre Manager Liping to bring the idea to conclusion. The chosen design represents both a 'tree' and a 'root' map. Mayland means beauitful land and a tree was chosen to represent Mayland. The tree also represents the 'tree of knowledge'. The angular design of the tree refers also to the route map of an underground metro system or overground road infrastructure linking people and places, ideas and outputs.

Planning Mayde

The final planning of Mayde took place in November 2006 in Gunagzhou. David and Roger travelled to Guangzhou where they worked with Mayland employee (and now Mayde Centre Manager) Liping Liu to scope out Mayde, its roles and responsibilities (see below) and decide on the make-up of the opening event. Days were spent creating the Mayde vision and discussing who would be responsible for the various strands of the Mayde concept.
The date of the 16th of March 2007 was set for the official opening of Mayde (see above).

Making it

The Mayde project began some years ago, but it wasn't called Mayde back then.
The whole project started when in 2004, Dr David Hawkins, then Head of Research and Knowledge Transfer at the University College for the Creative Arts, Kent, UK began working with Chinese company Mayland to develop and implement a Design Research Centre in Guangzhou, China. Since taking up the position of HOS at Unitec in October 2006, David working with Associate Head of School Roger Bateman, has continued to develop the research centre and on 16th March 2007, the Mayland Design Exchange (MayDE) officially opened.

This blog is about Mayde, what it is, what it does and doesn't do. This blog will keep you up to date with Mayde and it progression. We hope you will find Mayde exciting and that you will become a part of the Mayde network.

So what is Mayde?
Mayde is a joint venture between the Unitec School of Design and Guangzhou based large scale property developed Mayland. (May - Mayland de - design exchange)

Mayde’s facilities are based within the Mayland World Home Expo Centre, a newly-built, 2 million square metre homeware centre in Guangzhou, China. There are plans to build further Home Expo Centres in Shanghai and Beijing.

Mayde offers a range of design services to Chinese companies, including design consultancy, lifestyle and trend prediction, design training, network building, a design/manufacturers index and designer exchanges.

Mayde will develop a range of homeware products to be sold under a unique Mayland brand at stores in Mayland’s retail centres.

Mayde opened for business on 16 March, 2007. To celebrate the opening, Mayland held a brand release conference with the brand mission of “Growth by Design”.

There were three programmes in the brand release, firstly, a design exhibition featuring “essenze - New Zealand Inspired Design” and “Originated From China”; secondly, a design seminar, “Design Exchange & Business Potential”; thirdly, a design match-making party with opportunities for local and international design collaboration.

What is Unitec New Zealand’s involvement?

Unitec’s School of Design based at the Mt Albert, Auckland, campus has more than 600 students studying in the:
× Certificate in Design
× Diploma in Contemporary Photography
× Diploma in Design Media
× Bachelor of Product Design
× Bachelor of Design with majors in Interior Design, Three Dimensional, Visual Communication
× Graduate Diploma in Design (Digital Animation)
× Master of Design

Head of Unitec’s School of Design, David Hawkins, has had an ongoing relationship with Mayland. Mayde is the result of his discussions.

It is expected that Unitec School of Design students, staff and graduates will have the opportunity to travel to Mayde to carry out research, work on design projects and provide design expertise.

How will New Zealand design benefit?

Mayde is a doorway for New Zealand design to the massive China market.

New Zealand designers working through Mayde will have the opportunity to design products for Mayland to be sold via Mayland’s Home Expo Centres.

Mayde will offer designer matchmaking services, connecting Chinese manufacturers with New Zealand designers.

New Zealand design’s profile will be raised through workshops and seminars and design training run by Mayde for Chinese clients.

Mayde will promote the New Zealand design industry via exhibitions, events, its website and publications.

Mayde will launch a 'Good Design Award' in China.