Gideon Löwy
C001694
England／Architecture Design
Löwy was born and educated in England, studied and practiced Architecture and Design in Denmark.He is the Vice President of Association of Danish Designers from 1999 – 2002 in Denmark. Currently he is the president at Scandinavian Design Consultant and Construction Companies, and Design Director at Scandinavian Designers Multidisciplinary Studio in Taiwan. He is also an Adjunct Professor at National Taiwan University and Associate Professor at Taichung National and Yunlin National Universities of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Moreover, Löwy is the founder of “Future Design”, Co-founder of “Future Impact Foundation” and Director of “Future Impact Group”, Taiwan and UK.
With over 35 years of international design practice at the highest professional level (20 in Denmark and 15 in Taiwan), Löwy has an unusually broad insight into the design profession and its practice, both locally and globally. He co-founded Lindinger-Löwy Industrial Design in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1982 and Scandinavian Design Consultant and Construction Companies, Taiwan with his wife, designer Chia-Ling Liao in 2002. Serving government, industrial, commercial and private clients, the Scandinavian Designers Multidisciplinary Studio in Taiwan offers its customers unique ‘TotalDesign®’ and ‘Design-led Business Development Services’.
The studio’s deliveries span Architecture (Eco-cycle Building and Residential); Space Design (Retail, Commercial, Exhibition and Interior); Industrial Design (Product and Packaging); Communication Design (Graphic and Identity); as well as Branding and Strategic Innovation. Working with premium clients in Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy), Asia (Taiwan, Japan, Korea, China, Sri Lanka) and the US, the studio has been recognised with among others the iF Award (Hanover), SMAU (Milano), G-Mark (Japan), Design Excellence Award (Taiwan) and the FIABCI World Prix d'Excellence Gold Award (Global).
Invited to become a Professor at the Design College at Chaoyang University of Technology, Löwy has lived in Taichung, Taiwan since 2002. From 2007 – 08, he was Visiting Professor at Seoul National University’s College of Fine Arts, Department of Design. In 2015, he became Founder of the ‘iDEAS! Learning Program’ and Director of the ‘iCE Design Labs’ at the International School of Technology and Management at Feng Chia University. He is currently teaching at the Executive Master of Science program at the Institute of Industrial Engineering at National Taiwan University and the Graduate Schools of Design at both Taichung National and Yunlin National Universities of Science and Technology.
Since the early 1980’s, Löwy has been invited to give keynotes and speeches at International Conferences and Congresses and since the 2000’s to be a judge of international design competitions. After serving for a decade as International Liaison for the Association of Danish Designers (now Design denmark) to ICSID (now WDO) he was elected VP from 1999 to 2002, a period during which he was involved in the establishment of the world-famous Index: Design Award and a prime mover in the formulation of a National Design Policy for Denmark.
Löwy’s research focuses on three areas: Intelligence, Mind & Thinking; Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Leadership: Ethos, Stewardship, Governance and Sustainability. Today, he is one of the world’s few Design Philosophers and founder of the emerging discipline of “Future Design” which combines Futurology and Design to propose “Better Futures: Better Lives in a Better World”.
Portfolio
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PentaLab, Bang & Olufsen, Denmark
Innovative Active Loudspeakers designed in 1983 for world’s leading hi-end HiFi manufacture, B&O. This, my first ‘360˚ Innovation Design’ was conceived without a backside and designed to be beautifully executed from all aspects and won iF Product Design Award in 1985, and the G-Mark Award, HiFi Import of the Year and Brutus Prize in Japan in 1986. Establishing B&O as a leader in acoustics and style these speaker reigned undisputed in the market, unchanged for 20 years. Sustainable design at its best!
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Lao Tsu Say Teabags, Taiwan
Designed in 2005 for sale in Paris and London, this exquisite hi-end Pyramid Tea Bag Packaging was conceived to promote Taiwanese High-mountain Tea as a luxury beverage in the European Market. Combining the hitherto unknown pyramid teabag that allows whole tea leaves to opening during brewing with innovative packaging design that allows the large strip-off label with Chinese Flower Painting and pithy quotations from Laozi’s ‘Dao De Jing’ to follow the beverage to the table, the series won the iF Global Packaging Award in 2007.
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Lavender Cottage, Taiwan
Designed as part of a complete relaunch of the Lavender Cottage ‘Purple Hill’ brand from 2010 – 12 during which we conceived their new brand identity, redesigned their shops, display, bottles, packaging and graphics, this picture of their new product range demonstrates the power of a ‘360˚ Innovation Design’ ‘Scandinavian TotalDesign®’ project. The bottles were designed to have an antique, high-quality feel and the labels combined the brand’s eye-catching artwork into a story-telling concept to give the brand and business new direction and vitality. Lavender Cottage has since become an popular, iconic brand in Taiwan.
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Asics Barefoot Shoe, Japan
Designed in 2007 as a ‘Foot-Glove’, this shoe was based on deep research into the anatomy and physiology of human foot, movement and body posture. With its ‘360˚ Innovation Design’, this unique concept rethought footwear, comfort, health and shoe manufacture as a ‘Scandinavian TotalDesign®’ process. Thinking of the foot as part of the total physiology of the human body rather than a body-part, the shoe integrated the iconic ‘ASICS’ stripes as a functional part of the arch tensioning system, while the fabric was cross-woven to follow the flexing of the foot, and the sole laminated to carry the dynamically changing stress and shape of the foot in movement while balancing, distributing and dispersing the total weight, energy and momentum of the body despite the minimal ‘glove’ concept.
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Beocom Telephone, Bang & Olufsen, Denmark
Designed in 1983, this telephone was B&O’s first and a landmark in the company’s transition from analogue to digital signal processing. Immediately recognised as a breakthrough innovation in telephone design the Beocom series brought colourful, lifestyle design to the very traditional and functional area of technical design. The phone also featured new functionality: a lightweight handset, hi-fi quality sound, a Universal Design dialling pad and emergency call function, a sliding notepad concealing the quick-numbers and user-manual underneath, and a range of 4 bright and 4 pastel colours plus black and white. Launched in 1986, these landline phones remained unchanged on the market until 2003, an astonishing feat for an electronic product in any category. Beocom phones won iF (Hanover), SMAU (Milano) and G-Mark (Japan) Awards in 1986 and 1987.
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1st Taiwan Creative Design Expo, Taipei
In 2003, as the first of our ‘Scandinavian TotalDesign®’project in Taiwan, we designed the whole space, exhibition and graphic communication of ‘The Danish Design Pavilion’ to introduce the Scandinavian Design concept to the Taiwanese public for the first time. The design brought ‘Good Design’ down off the museum pedestal to visitor-level, making everyday quality-of-life accessible to ordinary citizens and starting a significant trend of Nordic Design in the design and commercial sectors that continues in Taiwan to this day.
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OTOP Store, Sun Moon Lake, Taiwan
This ‘One Town, One Product’ BOT store on the shores of the popular tourist destination of Sun Moon Lake was designed in 2010 to promote Taiwanese Crafts and Specialties to local and international visitors. The environment is beautifully designed and executed with undulating walls and ceiling inspired by the waters of the lake. A ‘Scandinavian TotalDesign®’ experience, the store has been visited by millions of tourists in the course of the intervening years and triggered a refurbishment of the surrounding, competing shops, lifting the aesthetic quality of the whole area.
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Green Feng Hsui Building, Xiluo, Taiwan
This unique building, designed and constructed from 2011 - 17 for a Chinese Medical Doctor, is an ‘360˚ Innovation Design’ ‘EnergyReCycle®’ structure conceived as a single heat-exchange unit, recirculating cooled water from basement reservoirs through the floors and back down a series of outdoor pools and waterfalls maintaining an ecosystem of fish and plants, and dehumidified air drawn though the space by a convection tower effect; hence the name of the project: Green Feng Hsui Building. Located in a traditional, countryside town this building stands out as a landmark and beacon of Grassroots Rural Revival and apart from a Chinese Herbal Remedy Processing Plant, houses a clinic, library, shop and an acoustically designed chamber concert hall and TED-Taiwan auditorium. As part of our ‘Scandinavian TotalDesign®’ practice, we also designed the functional technical systems, interior as well as the CIS and VI for the building and business.
