The Grand Tour · 2026 China Academy of Art (CAA) Graduation Season has come to a successful close. Graduates from 20 academic units responded to the times with art and explored the future through creativity, unfolding a youthful narrative of ideals, journeys, and growth across the city and campus, transforming Hangzhou into an open art venue that gathers intellectual power, creativity, and action.
The China Academy of Art is proud to launch the "Youth Insights" series, which continues to focus on topics such as avant-garde practice, humanities and technology, rural academies, A better China, rooted construction, people-centered, poetic cinema, visual sinology, Eastern design, and overseas insights. The series closely follows how young creators measure the world with their footsteps and respond to the times with their works. Between every departure and arrival, we jointly witness the grand explorations and boundless possibilities of a new generation of artists.
When the digital tide intermingles with the warmth of the handmade, and when Eastern civilization redefines its own coordinates in global dialogue, young creators have long since transcended the boundaries of function and object, regarding design as the flow of aesthetic will and the extension of life's ideals. Rooted in a century of Sino-foreign mutual learning, they delve deep into the soil of geo-cultural identity, echoing the China Academy of Art's Eastern design philosophy of "pluralistic interaction and harmony without uniformity." Carrying forward the wisdom of their forebears, they reshape a Eastern foundation for contemporary design—one that nurtures both body and soul.
Jade Quest
Shi Wanting
College:EDNA Joint Institute
Instructors: Yu Jiadi, Xu Li
Category: Product Design
Dimensions: Portable Explorer Φ12cm × 5.4cm; Generation Terminal 36cm × 31cm × 13.4cm; Building Blocks 5.5cm × 5.5cm × 1.5cm
This design takes the jade exhibition hall of the Liangzhu Museum as its setting and addresses the visiting needs of children aged 6–12 with low vision. It constructs a multi‑sensory exploration system that integrates "audio guidance, tactile exploration, behavioural recording, and result generation." Through a portable touch‑and‑listen explorer, on‑site exploration nodes, and a jade‑pattern generation terminal, the work translates the contours, perforations, textures, and symmetrical relationships of eight Liangzhu jade artefacts into tangible graphic modules. Children complete tasks of touching, comparing, selecting, and confirming within role‑playing scenarios, ultimately generating tactile jade‑pattern cards that transform exhibition information from mere visual viewing into an experience that is perceptible, participatory, and retainable. The design reorganises exhibition content into a continuous experiential journey of "listening, touching, selecting, and keeping," enabling children with low vision to build understanding of jade characteristics through non-visual perception.
Mentor's Message
Shi Wanting has consistently focused on vulnerable groups in her research. Under the theme "Inclusive Museum Design within a Multi-Sensory Narrative Framework," she conducted in‑depth explorations of information organization and experiential structures. Taking design practice as her primary approach, she centred on children with visual impairments as her core research subjects while also introducing the visiting behaviors of typically sighted children as a comparative reference, aiming to construct more inclusive experiential methods under different perceptual conditions. This topic demonstrates both social concern and academic value. Throughout the research process, she exhibited a strong sense of social responsibility and empathy toward the visually impaired, while also highlighting the appeal of children's toys in her visual style, bringing the overall design logic closer to an instinctive understanding of enhanced cognition and perception. Her work not only cares for children with visual impairments but also naturally benefits typically sighted children, truly achieving "inclusion" rather than "separation." I sincerely wish her a broader future, carrying forward this warmth of responsibility and professional competence.
Shi Wanting
Master's Graduate, Class of 2026, Art and Technology programme, EDNA Joint Institute, (China Academy of Art).
