The Last Tomorrowland

Terrain Biennial 2021

The Last Tomorrowland proposes the blueprints and planning for a theme park resort constructed on the largest floating trash island between California and Hawaii. The project unveils the intricate meaning of trash that underlies the vivid colors of the amusement park while showing business exploitation from a socioeconomic perspective. This is the Last Tomorrowland: all the highlights of our human inventions of past, present, and future are gathered in one big, bright ticket in your hand.

The project narrative is executed with a corporate perspective of a theme park resort development proposal commenting on the geopolitical dynamics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the socio-economic behavioral effects of business exploitation of natural resources. The proposal suggests that in the foreseeable future, corporations would be able to bring capital to the middle of the Pacific Ocean by densifying the ocean debris into a floating island and further on constructing infrastructure for profits. The only way to prevent the island from sinking is to generate a stable source of waste which will be fulfilled by the theme park resort. The circular economy model soon brings in support from NGOs and government funding to fast-pass the construction. And for millions of families in the United States, this vacation resort just a three-hour flight from the west coast is destined for success. 

The relationship between trash and theme park is the first layer of this joyful journey with environmental awareness and colonizing natural resources issues. The reconstituted trash waste seems nothing harmful while supporting the foundational economic formula of this development. The great contrast hides under the similarity between the endless need for waste and the endless desire for revenue. The second layer brings the audience into the amusement park atmosphere while emphasizing the dissonance of the trash-themed park. Whether a resort island full of trash could provide enough attractions and entertainment for families to spend a day or two will remain questionable, but the efforts of branded facilities and corporate sponsorships are the golden template of how capitalism finds its way into our lives. The last layer of the project shows the blueprints and plans behind the attractions that fulfill the desire and the visual component that attracts the public's attention.

For hand drawings of The Last Tomorrowland, please visit: riochen.com/works/tmrlanddrawings

This work was featured in :
SAIC Gallery in Chicago, USA
Terrain Biennial International Public Art 2021 in Chicago, USA
LiTang Gallery in New York, USA

Hand Drawings of The Last Tomorrowland

Terrain Biennial 2021

This series of hand drawings include the sketches of each attraction and site plans of The Last Tomorrowland and his visit to Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

For the proposed plan of The Last Tomorrowland, please visit: riochen.com/works/tmrland

World of Burgers

Wanted Design x NYC design week 2021

UH is Ultimate Happiness

World of Burgers (WOB) is a board game in which players navigate forces of global labor and macroeconomics using the infamous Big Mac. Inspired by global minimum wage policies and burgernomics–which uses the Big Mac as a price benchmark to illustrate the concept of purchasing power parity–WOB takes cues from Monopoly and places restrictions on players based on real-world concepts like economic inflation and labor violations. A player can win the game by understanding different relationships between labor and time, as determined by the conditions created by globalization.

WOB (2021) is a sequel to Ultimate Happiness (2020) that focuses on fast food culture and its socioeconomic structure in the contemporary world. ⠀

Ultimate Happiness was founded in 2019, focuses on fast food topics with social awareness issues. ⠀

World of Burgers is featured on Wanted Design NYC and Whatnot Studio website.

Photo credits: Johnathan Allen

 The World of Burgers by Rio Chen is an extended series of designed objects from the original UH collection 2020 and is part of Whatnot Studio 2021 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ultimate Happiness

Wanted Design x NYC design week 2020-2021

Fast-food is our shortcut to Utopia.

When it comes to American culture, fast-food is undeniably dominant and has taken the advantage to expand worldwide with the force of globalization. The ever-growing industry brings the service of convenience and a source of joy, promoted idyllically in advertisements for the young. While under the bright-warm yellow and red signage, the image is often associated with health and environmental concerns. From French fries to hamburgers, people consume fast-food for various reasons. Ultimate Happiness (UH) dives into the irony of fast-food, delivering a product that is even faster, cheaper, and more accessible compared to current business models. 

According to the CDC’s data in 2018*, low-income individuals are not major fast-food customers. While poorer neighborhoods are more likely to have higher exposure to fast-food, people consume more when their income levels go up. This affordable indulgence is especially popular among young adults aged 20 to 39, who also make up the largest share of the US labor force. As simple as it seems, a quick-served meal may deliver more than we could imagine; it also shows how different social classes react to the issue inside a box of nuggets.

Speedy mass-produced food serves more purposes nowadays than just filling up travelers' and workers' stomachs. Our impressions of fast-food may be a lot more delightful since these businesses tried their best to shift our focus from pre-made foods to something fresh and healthy. Packaging has always been a vital element when it comes to take-aways. The UH collection brings the sale price down by single-packaging the nuggets and fries with pre-dipped sauces while highlighting the quantity with health measurements. Single pre-dipped nuggets and fries are cheaper and faster to produce by default, but the over-packaged design generates unnecessary waste. 

‘The One’ nugget pack further emphasizes the rarity of collectible fast-food with a premium touch of metallic texture; the veggie pack gathers the most nutritious but undesirable part of burgers and sandwiches. The dystopian reality of fast-food culture is the irony of Ultimate Happiness. The making of UH collection is cohesively related to the mass-production technique with the repetitive process and low-cost materials involved. By proposing an alternate reality, audiences are expected to explore the possibility in response to the current social structure with the world of fast-food. Through visual exaggeration, UH hopes to bring both the good and bad elements of fast-food into one small packaged item.

UH… is Ultimate Happiness.

Fries Pack | 108 x 63 mm / 4.25 x 2.5 in

Nugget Pack | 120 x 82 x 25 mm / 4.75 x 3.25 x 1 in

Veggie Pack | 171 x 120 x 31 mm / 6.75 x 4.75 x 1.25 in

Citation:
Fryar CD, Hughes JP, Herrick KA, Ahluwalia, N. Fast food consumption among adults in the United States, 2013–2016. NCHS Data Brief, no 322. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2018.

The idea of UH is about structuring the realm of ultimacy in fast-food and its contradictory component in the socioeconomic perspective.