On April 25, the Institute of Creativity and Innovation(ICI) of Xiamen University was invited to attend the launch ceremony of the Greentown Town Yueji Resort Collection. To further integrate industry and education and enable artistic design to serve local development, Deputy Dean He Dongmei led a delegation to the event and delivered a keynotespeech. Faculty and students presented a number of original design and art healing projects on site. Drawing on international creative strengths, the College empowers town life, elevates the lifestyle aesthetics of Anji Peach Blossom Spring, and embarks on a new journey of industry-education integration.
As Xiamen University’s first Sino-foreign cooperative educational institution, the College boasts high-quality educational resources from both China and the UK. It actively extends classroom teaching to rural areas and communities, enabling creativity to take root in real-life scenarios and forging in-depth connections between theoretical teaching and social practice. At the event, the College showcased a series of course achievements including Zephyr Care, Mine Your Destiny, Fatty Pot and Tea Cart Installation. Centering on the sensory experience of five-sense healing, these projects adopt local craftsmanship, sustainable design and outdoor social space construction as core creative approaches for on-site implementation.
The interdisciplinary Creative Foundation courses Business and Entrepreneurship Skills & Creativity and Innovation are designed to cultivate students’ comprehensive capabilities to address contemporary social, cultural, technological and environmental challenges. Students from the Class of 2023 adopted design thinking and Business Model Canvas to transform abstract social issues into feasible practical solutions, forming a complete closed loop from creative conception to business planning. Emphasizing teamwork, interdisciplinary integration, user research and sustainable innovation, the courses adopt portfolio presentation and project roadshow as assessment methods, committed to nurturing future design leaders with entrepreneurial awareness and social responsibility.
Zephyr Care takes Alchemy of the Soul as its core concept to create an immersive five-sense healing experience. It transforms emotional stress into tangible experiences—visible, scent-based, tactile, and tasteful—using a sense of ritual to soothe the mind and body. Mine your destiny used an immersive ore-mining interaction as a medium, allowing participants to relieve anxiety through the process of digging and polishing and realize immersive participatory healing.
Two other installations originated from students’ Challenge Cup and the course module Fabrication & Construction for Environmental Design. These projects guide students to step out of the classroom into villages, communities, and workshops. Through hands-on practice, team collaboration and in-depth reflection, students gain insight into the intrinsic relationship between human beings, technology and society.
Fatty Pot is a multi-functional integrated cooking device tailored for outdoor scenarios. Breaking the limitations of traditional single-mode cooking, it integrates frying, deep-frying, stir-frying, grilling, and stewing. With an innovative multi-layer structure, it supports diverse cooking operations simultaneously, expanding the boundary and efficiency of outdoor catering. It also serves as a social catalyst for "co-cooking and co-eating," elevating outdoor dining into a shared cultural experience.
Tea Cart installation is constructed with traditional mortise and tenon joints and made of eco-friendly sustainable materials such as recycled steel and bamboo weaving. In a community setting, it acts as a nexus between people, nature, and memory—a gentle approach to rural revitalization where design becomes a dialogue.
Deputy Dean He Dongmei remarked that the College is currently evolving its "In-situ Internationalization" into an "International Localization" model of university-local cooperation, matching international design wisdom with regional development needs. This collaboration marks a vivid practice of the College’s industry-education integration. Looking ahead, the ICI of Xiamen University will continue to deepen cooperation with Greentown Group. By utilizing a cross-cultural perspective and a practice-oriented educational system, the College aims to bring more youth creativity into resorts, empower rural construction, enrich rural areas through design, and warm hearts through art, collectively building a new vision for an ideal, high-quality life.
