Taobao Supply Chain

  • Imported Dreams: furniture produced in industrial parks from across the sea (Illustrated by Ai Liu, Background Photo courtesy of Zhequan Zhan)
  • Cyber Cityscape: The Pathway for Taobao's Arrival in Hong Kong (Illustrated by Ai Liu, Background Photo courtesy of Zhequan Zhan)
  • Urban Connection: The Shenzhen-Hong Kong Railroad and Its Cityscape (Illustrated by Ai Liu, Background Photo courtesy of Chuntong Wong)
  • Cross-border transportation workflow (Illustrated by Ai Liu)
  • Taobao Furniture Tailored for Hong Kong Living Spaces (Illustrated by Ai Liu)
  • The Journey of a Piece of Furniture (Illustrated by Ai Liu)

This project aims to unfold the production, logistics and spatial networks of Taobao supply chain with brochures, diagrams, writing, photography and video by tracing the supply chain of several piece of furniture made in Guangdong, bought through Taobao and placed in Hong Kong homes.

This project aims to unfold the production, logistics and spatial networks of Taobao supply chain with brochures, diagrams, writing, photography and video by tracing the supply chain of several piece of furniture made in Guangdong, bought through Taobao and placed in Hong Kong homes.

Mapping physical spaces, infrastructures and cross-border stakeholders, including the tangible manufacturing and logistics spaces, industry workers and the consumer in Hong Kong as well as intangible processes, will constitute the work produced for this project hoping to explore an increasingly visible relationship between the built environment, social relationships and an online platform, digitalization and logistics infrastructure, through virtual and physical connections.

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2023
Grantee: Ai Liu

Ai Liu is a PhD student at John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. She obtained degrees in Landscape Architecture and Urban Design from Tongji University and Technical University of Berlin. She is interested in topics of urban informality, bottom-up community building and digital urbanism, with a recent focus on subdivided unit and Urban villages.

Yuxiang Dong, currently a master's student at Tongji University and a coming PhD student at Penn State University, is passionate about digital technology in landscape design and visualization. Winning the awards of 2021 ASLA student award, the second prize in the UIA-CBC design competition and has taken part in the Digital FUTURES workshop, he made several design attempts to use visualization in calling for public attention on urban issues and tried to find solutions to the impacts of digitalization on urban development.