Under Pressure: Linear Habits, Circular Futures

Oliver Lin is Vice President of the Taiwan Design Research Institute (TDRI), with more than 30 years of experience advancing Taiwanese design and its international presence. His work spans city design development, national design policy and the growth of Taiwan’s design ecosystem. At TDRI, he leads national design policy development, supports innovation and capacity building for enterprises, and promotes Design in Taiwan internationally. He is regularly invited to serve as a juror, speaker and advisor for design and government initiatives. For this conversation, he brings a perspective on the cross-sector relationships needed to translate circular design into practical action.

Yen-An Chen is the founder and creative director of Atelier YenAn and a board member of the Taiwan Industrial Designers Association. With a background in product and social design, he studied and worked in the UK and the Netherlands. His practice spans product design, branding, curation, filmmaking and cultural research. He uncovers overlooked value in everyday life, local culture and industrial contexts, translating it into objects, exhibitions and narratives. As curator of Island Under Pressure, Taiwan’s pavilion at Dutch Design Week 2026, he explores how designers, researchers, manufacturers and communities respond to environmental and industrial pressures through circular design.

Jennifer Shen brings multidisciplinary experience across design, art, branding and market strategy, and is a graduate of ArtCenter College of Design. At Yi Chun Green Technology, she focuses on circular resources, green materials and sustainable design, advancing solutions for used-diaper recycling. Her work connects collection and material recovery with the development of recycled-material applications. Guided by the vision One Diaper, One Circular Future, she explores how discarded materials can re-enter production supply chains. For this conversation, she brings the practical challenge of connecting recycling technology, design decisions and industrial demand so that a material’s next life can become a reality.

Elise Talgorn is a multidisciplinary researcher and artist exploring how stories can spark compassionate connections between people, nature and technology. She holds a PhD in renewable energy physics and worked in sustainable innovation at Philips, broadening her expertise to planet-centred design, systems thinking and narratology. At the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, she researches how participatory story-based experiences can support social and environmental transformation. As an artist, she creates paintings and comics that give voice to the more-than-human and challenge dominant narratives. Her work connects the cultural stories we live by with the possibilities we see for changing systems. Her paintings and comics explore these questions through artistic practice.

With a background in materials design and research, and as a lecturer at TU/e Industrial Design, Simone de Waart is passionate about bringing people and perspectives together to explore new possibilities for a circular future. Through Material Sense, she connects designers, researchers, artists, industry and education to inspire material innovation for circular societies. She has worked in Taiwan leading circular design masterclasses at NCKU Tainan and co-curating an exhibition exploring Dutch and Taiwanese perspectives on inclusive design.