Xinyue Zhao
Inspired by my personal experience, I am an interior designer focused on designing spaces for subculture groups, such as fans and otaku. The most important consideration for me is understanding the behaviours and demands of different groups. To what extent the spaces can affect these users’ behaviours and lifestyles. What kind of spaces are required for them in the future or the present context? I enjoy the process of exploring the uniqueness of certain groups and understanding the psychological reasons behind the behaviours and how I, as the designer, can efficiently utilise the subculture elements to create appropriate design proposals and unique spaces experience for subculture groups.
Works
Young forever
AIM:
This project explores the relationship between idol-related places and para-social relationships and how these spaces influence fans’ emotions and behaviours. Moreover, some fans cannot handle para-social relationship appropriately, which influence their attitude towards their lives. So, I was thinking about using the sense of place of idol-related places to break and blur the border between para-social and normal social relationships. So I designed a virtual residence for one fan to live with idols. It is a place without an exit for fans to escape from the real world. However, they cannot return to the real world. Are they willing to live such a virtual life? I want to use this place to remind fans how to deal with para-relationship.
INTRODUCTION:
This project focus on the relationship between celebrities, fans and celebrity-related locations and how these three interact with each other. I focused on k-pop culture and selected BTS fans as the subject of this study because BTS is one of the most influential boy bands in South Korea, with a huge amount of fans and rich information sources. I have researched the relationship and influence of these three things through literature review, fan interviews and questionnaires, combined with my own experiences as a fan and my analysis of the idol-related space. Ultimately, based on these findings, I designed a virtual home for a fan to live with BTS.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
How does fans’ attachment to idols affect their perceptions of idol-related places?
How do idol-related places influence fans’ feelings and behavioural intentions?
How do fans’ perceptions of idol-related places change after travelling to the physical places rather than looking at the pictures?
