Business Fortune
A group of youthful, imaginative designers with degrees from prestigious international universities like GSD and UPENN created RAC STUDIO. Harvard Graduate School of Design alumnus Hongfei Ji co-founded RAC STUDIO alongside Lifeng Lin and numerous other exceptionally gifted designers from top universities across the globe. RAC is committed to developing young designers with an international perspective by creating an integrated design academy that integrates industry, academia, and research. RAC has expanded into China's largest institution for spatial design education.
2015 saw the establishment of RAC STUDIO.
Here is what Hongfei Ji had to say after being contacted by Business Fortune.
Interview Highlights
Could you please give a brief overview of the occasions leading up to RAC STUDIO's establishment?
We first began seeking partners for our weekend workshops on spatial design back in 2015. Then, we discovered that this method worked well for tackling real-world issues and advancing jobs and education. We began to consider this technique as a feasible business option after receiving excellent comments about it from our study abroad experience in China, where it was considered an innovative practice.
Which industries do you serve clients in? Could you share with us one or two success stories detailing the difficulties your clients encountered and how RAC STUDIO assisted them in overcoming those difficulties?
Prior to 2022, RAC mainly offered individuals professional training and consulting services for study abroad and career development in the field of spatial and interactive design. We offer consulting and training services to thousands of design students each year, as well as online courses and short-term workshops for tens of thousands of users, assisting them in getting into the best design schools and firms in the world. As the company evolved, we, taking education as the starting point, invited international cutting-edge universities, professors, and research organizations to participate in our programs through our international teams.
Simultaneously, we started investigating a comprehensive approach to spatial and interactive design that integrates research, industry, and academia and meets the demands of individuals, companies, and governments. In several fields, educators frequently lag behind business innovations in education, researchers frequently have trouble creating test cases for the newest designs, and corporate demand for innovative personnel is strong. As a result, we made the decision to create instructional materials that bridge the gaps between business, academia, and research while also satisfying industry demands. The goal of these all-encompassing, interdisciplinary approaches is to effectively integrate research, industry, and education.
For example, to assist academic instructors and students in staying up to date with real-world situations, our educational solutions frequently incorporate real consumers. Additionally, our programs address positions in businesses, governments, colleges, and charitable organizations both domestically and internationally.
Via our educational solutions and services, RAC Studio has recently concentrated on urban micro-renewal, rural revitalization, sustainable development, heritage conservation, interactive design and technology, and other topics. In the meantime, we have been interested in the most recent policies and changes that address new challenges and issues. We have asked academic researchers from prestigious international design institutions, like MIT, UCL, AA, TUD, and Politecnico di Milano, to join in our programs in order to better accomplish our aims (with the government and corporations).
In research initiatives like the "World Endangered Site" Yunnan Shaxi Ancient Town and the "World Natural Heritage" China Yellow (Bohai) Sea Migratory Bird Habitat, we have guided college students on field visits. In China's cities and countryside, we have also organized and finished numerous restoration and art installation projects. Through these initiatives, we effectively integrate research, educational activities, and the real-world requirements of local programs while also assisting students in understanding the various stages of a project, from conception to realization and research and design to implementation.
As of right now, RAC's real-world initiatives have won multiple prestigious prizes and gained national and worldwide media attention. Major international art exhibitions have included these realized works, such as "SHANGHAI DESIGN 100+" at the World Design Cities Conference in 2022.
In the Small-Scale Projects category (Pop-ups & Temporary), we have been nominated for the Architizer A+ Awards. We have also won the Social Space Winners at INDE Awards and won Gold and Silver Awards in the Space Creative Design (Professional Group) at the Golden Panda Tianfu Creative Design Awards 2022. Additionally, our work has made it onto the 2022 Dezeen Design Awards Longlists: Architecture-Small Building and has been shortlisted for the LOOP Design Award. Furthermore, they have been widely covered by more than one hundred foreign media outlets, including well-known magazines like ArchDaily and Gooood.
In 2022, we oversaw hundreds of college students in the design and construction of six installations in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, working with government agencies and private companies. The program offered low-cost experiments about rural ecological sustainability and poverty alleviation for governments and enterprises, as well as fulfilling experiences for the students, with a focus on an ecologically fragile conservation area. The program has also been shortlisted for the World Design Cities Conference 2023's Shanghai Design 100+.
Describe the RAC STUDIO group to us. What benefit do they offer the business?
Our team comprises several hundred part-time and a few dozen full-time designers, all of whom have earned graduate degrees overseas. As a result, RAC has a worldwide viewpoint, strong scientific research skills, and long-lasting connections with top universities and research institutions across the globe. As the business develops, we serve tens of thousands of customers annually.
The group has been offering a range of educational items and working with a more broad clientele over the last two years. Our team has successfully completed the digital transformation and online collaboration in the three-year Covid-19 epidemic, despite the mounting business challenges that follow. Each partner is currently using a digital dashboard to track the real-time dynamics of clients and the company. We create and deliver services with the utmost detail, allowing RAC to grow steadily and receiving favorable feedback from the market.
What new projects is RACstudio working on right now?
This year, we are more methodically putting our integrated industry-academia-research strategy into practice in businesses and government agencies.
Before we conclude, is there anything more you would like to say?
We think that the growth model developed by RAC, which combines research, business, and academia, offers a cutting-edge solution for the modern world, where sustainable development is a pressing necessity. We also hope that additional companies, academic institutions, charitable groups, and government agencies both domestically and internationally will participate in our educational initiatives. We hope to extend an invitation to more foreign organizations through this interview.
Leadership | RAC STUDIO
Hongfei Ji: Hongfei is a co-founder of RAC STUDIO. He’s also the founder of Look Landscape Lab.
Lifeng Lin: Lifeng, co-founder, serves as the Chief Executive Officer of RAC STUDIO.
Haoran: Haoran serves as the Interactive Category Supervisor of RAC STUDIO.
Hao Hu: Hao is in charge of Guangshen.
