I chose this piece because fashion is an area where we can explore reaching a sustainable future that we are just beginning to work on. I hope that the whole society, including myself, will show new designers and artists like Scarlett Yang through their works and research that may be possible in the future. Fashion sustainability is also a close issue to my heart as an East African living in an area with the largest second-hand textile market in the world. Designers like Mr. Yang have shown us that the future is better, more beautiful and feasible, as companies are still not enough to think about sustainability and the environment.

Clemence Altavegoti's "Map of Silence" has a very mysterious charm. Anyone living in a city during a pandemic will find silence in a place normally filled with noise. But by mapping it, the writer turned that observation into something really beautiful. The visual quality of the work alone is commendable. Some places look like old lithographs, others look like mercury or fire. However, the essence is not only the beauty of the work, but also the idea of making the invisible visible and using technology to find aesthetics. This idea also has greater potential for video than a series of still images. The silence brought about by the pandemic has created time to stop, listen and think. It was easy to imagine that this idea would be transformed into live footage in Paris, New York, London, Tokyo and elsewhere to help people find quiet places in the world.

“Walking” is one of our daily means of transportation, but the value of “walking” has changed significantly due to the growing health consciousness of people today. This work goes beyond the concept of mere footwear, and the built-in pneumatic mechanical system can reduce the force applied to walking by up to 12%, so we think that it will be a tool that changes the concept of secondary movement from the railway station to the destination. I did. Furthermore, we believe that the use of this footwear can be a tool for forming a community around the station. Now, let's take a step into a new world of mobility with this work.

When considering the movement of people in cities, the perspective of "information distribution" is often overlooked in addition to the movement of people and goods (logistics). The terminal stations in big cities are visited by diverse people of different races and ranks, but they have not been able to provide an opportunity for them to interact and understand each other. Only when local residents gather in one place and interact with each other to become acquainted, a "map of invisible people-to-people connections" is engraved in each other's brains. In the current situation where there are only existing regional groups such as residents' associations that are aging and becoming corpse, the groups that face regional issues are creating a new "information network" that will be a way to solve the issues, such as a "route map in the brain". It is important to nurture. Now that classrooms are difficult to open due to indoor vacant spaces isolated from the area due to the corona disaster, this plan that can create temporary classrooms outdoors is not only an advantage of maintaining social distance, but also local residents know each other It should also function as a great "display" to visualize the relationships between people who did not exist.

Sherry Shao's Windows is unique in that it looks into the world during and after COVID 19 by pursuing the possibility of physical / multimodal communication using ordinary windows. It has become. In this work, the windows that separate the indoors from the outdoors, which are nothing more than glass, are transformed into a symbol of hope for those isolated in the COVID 19 whirlpool. In cultural history, windows have been deeply associated with romance and passion, like communication through windows depicted in romance novels, manga, and movies. It can be said that this work is an update of the cultural value of such windows into a multimodal mechanism that responds to pandemic situations. However, the theme of this work goes far beyond the limited situation of a pandemic. With the progress of urbanization and virtual reality, the lack of real solidarity has become a global problem. In urban society, it's no wonder you don't know the faces of your neighbors. In virtual space, you may feel lonely despite coexisting with many avatars. In modern society, there are many "hikikomori" who cannot step into society while recognizing the need to reconstruct real social bonds. Windows offers solutions to these modern challenges with its simple, creative and fun gimmicks that allow you to "be alone and be together." It is a work that can give individuals a sense of security and strengthen concrete social ties. For this reason, the jury will award the Student Awards to Sherry Shao's Windows, a simple yet powerful piece that confronts the COVID 19 situation.