"2009 Living Labs Workshops" Opening Ceremony Held in NCKU on October 10th.

TAINAN, Taiwan -- The Center for Technologies of Ubiquitous Computing and Humanity of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU TOUCH Center) held the first workshop named '2009 Living Lab Workshops,' on Oct. 10th at B1 Lecture in the department of architecture of NCKU. The main purpose of this workshop was to integrate multidisciplinary courses, and work on innovative projects. Prof. Michael Fox from the Pasadena and Southern California Institute of Architecture as well as the former host of the Kinetic Design Group in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab was invited to give a speech leading students on innovative project. He highly commended the achievement of NCKU TOUCH Center and provided some visible and innovative ideas.

Prof. Michael Fox has exemplified the interactive architecture design by his own vigorous cases conducted at the Pasadena and Southern California Institute of Architecture, the Kinetic Design Group of MIT Media Lab, and his own company, Foxlin Inc. In addition, Prof. Michael Fox interpreted the kinetic architecture design and mentioned that "When you look at kinetics in architecture. It always has a meaning of adaptability. How do things adapt? Cause everything out there in the world is adapting. But, typically, our architecture isn't."

Therefore, the goal of kinetic design is to enable the architecture to adapt to various needs. Take the cabin design for the Boeing Company as an example. The cabin is able to change its internal display for various passenger capacities. Prof. Michael Fox encouraged all participants to bring their own innovative ideas into practice without the fear of making mistakes. Hence, unique values or applications can often be discovered from any unexpected developments.

Prof. Jan-Fa Yang as the Dean of NCKU TOUCH Center also commented that Taiwan is moving from the planned economy into an aesthetics economy, and will move to the beneficial economy in the future. The TOUCH Center's goal is to move towards reciprocity in the economy, and design team co-development centers, schools, and even society as a whole the economy, and thus enhance the quality of life.

Prof. Feng-Tyan Lin as the Dean of the College of Planning & Design began with a recognition of the 'Aspire Home' implemented by NCKU TOUCH Center. He also illustrated that the living lab is one step away from the Aspire home in making technologies adaptable to people's future lives. Interactive architecture is just such a way to combine technology with humanity.

Lastly, Prof. Yang mentioned that Taiwan is moving from the planned economy into an aesthetics economy, and will move to the beneficial economy in the future. During the process, the goal of TOUCH Center is to collaborate with the design team on the economies development of the TOUCH Center and even the whole society, with an aim to improve the qualities of lives. In addition, he mentioned that the development of living technology should first be rooted in the interactive design of real-life needs, and then should be carried out by the improvement of technologies. This is supposed to be the humanized technology development.

The '2009 Living Labs Workshop' lasted for 5 days from October 10th to 14th. Through the series of workshops, Prof. Yang hopes that all participants will improve their design ability under leadership of Michael Fox and to upgrade the design abilities of the TOUCH Center. Prof. Michael Fox will lead all participants to practice on a series of innovative projects. Results of all the painstaking efforts from the participants were presented at the Seminar Achievement Show on October 14th.

About National Cheng Kung University (NCKU):

NCKU is located in the ancient city of Tainan, the historical and ancient cultural capital city of Taiwan, which boasts more than 50 national relics sanctioned by the government and is approximately 250 kilometers south of Taipei. It is connected to all major cities in Taiwan by the recently initiated state-of-the-art Taiwan High Speed Rail. Further, this historical heritage is the pride of Tainan City and represents a rich cultural resource to NCKU. The technological sectors in the Southern Taiwan Science Park offer students at NCKU with a stage to apply what they have learned into practice.

With three quarters of a century of distinguished history, with well over 130,000 powerful alumni now dotting the globe, many have achieved supreme successes in arts, business, education, science, technology and healthcare and are ready and willing to assist, with 22,000 academic selective students and 1200 academically significant faculty members currently, both have healthy dosage of international flavor, with enormous regional support, and with a permeating culture of proactive intellectual growth on the world's stage, NCKU in Tainan, Taiwan, has evolved from its engineering genesis to become a powerful comprehensive, research and international university in Asia Pacific.

Since NCKU's establishment in 1931, it has developed into a research intensive and comprehensive university with integrated academic fields in nine colleges: Liberal Arts, Sciences, Engineering, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, Planning & Design, Management, Social Sciences, Medicine, and Bioscience & Biotechnology. NCKU currently offers 40 undergraduate programs (excluding Program of Bachelor's Degree), 78 master's degree programs, 54 doctoral programs and 20 master's degree programs for working professionals.

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