The Faculty of Science and Engineering organised a cultural study for students to build the ‘Chinese Shan Shui’ by using the LEGO Architecture Studio. Three student-designed and created forms have been exhibited in the Former Residence of Yangming Wang on 18 June 2022.
The workshop is part of the FoSE Student Extra-curricular Programme, aiming to integrate contemporary practices with the traditional ideology of uniting knowledge and action and providing participants with an opportunity to experience ancient philosophy.
Different from the last year’s workshop, this year, Yimeng Wang, Practise-based Teaching Fellow in Architectural Design, introduced the LEGO Architecture Studio as main tool to the workshop. LEGO Architecture Studio is widely used among the UNNC Architecture programme and endorsed by many architects that it can help students learn the fundamentals of architectural design in a LEGO context. The standard LEGO white bricks offers students open opportunities to present their own imaginations of buildings, cities and landscapes.
The total 22 students registered for this year’s workshop have been divided into three groups and they picked three different themes quoted from Yangming Wang’s three favourite perspectives, “integration of knowledge and action”, “mind and the world”, “innate knowing”.
With the supervision of Anna Tong, the project initiator and Yimeng Wang, the academic supervisor, students visited the Former Residence of Yangming Wang for a few times and got inspiration from the book Five Hundred Years of Yangming Wang. After a week’s hard work in the UNNC Library’s LEGO Lab, the three elaborated pieces of work were finally come into reality.
The essence of Yangming Wang’s thought is the unity of knowledge and practice. These 22 students from the different programmes of FoSE have demonstrated greatly of this idea. They studied the philosophy of Yangming Wang and present their understanding of his philosophy through tangible objects. Only through the process of learner’s own active participation in the project can the absorption be achieved.
Anna Tong, Senior Student Support Manager for FoSE students and also the initiator of this Yangming Culture Study Group told us that she was very happy to see there are Computer Science, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Architecture, and Product Design and Manufacture students joining the workshop and bring the new understanding to Yangming Wang’s theory.
The Faculty of Science and Engineering has been long put emphasis on the hands-on practice of students and aims to cultivate talents and professional Engineers with both global vision and local practice, and well equipped to answer the calling of the country.