Written by / Researcher Wen-Wei Hsu, Researcher Yi-Syuan Guo


At the end of August 2024, the C-STONE circular coating ushered in its first spatial application demonstration, with Hualien Tongmen Elementary School as the main protagonist. Through teacher-student co-creation activities, the campus environment was beautified, while simultaneously allowing students to understand the precious value of recycled resource reuse and the opportunities for material innovation endowed by design.


This activity was jointly organized and prepared by the Taiwan Design Research Institute, the Stone & Resource Industry R&D Center, Techhome Technology, and iGoods. It brought the C-STONE marble circular coating, whose raw materials are sourced from the local stone industry in Hualien, back to a local school, imparting a brand-new appearance to the campus and demonstrating the possibility of combining environmental sustainability education with future industrial sustainable development (see Figure 1).

From Participation to Co-Creation

The activity invited a total of 27 teachers and students from Tongmen Elementary School to participate. Through interactive presentations, the course allowed students to deeply understand the development of the stone industry in their hometown and the concept of a circular economy. In the practical design workshop, students paired C-STONE coating with different color pastes, utilized naturally collected branches as creative tools (Figure 2), and took inspiration from the local tribal legend of Sisil to create artwork, bringing a resonance of nature and design to the campus walls. The process allowed students to come into contact with environmental education and SDGs issues during their creative process, cultivating core literacies of autonomous action, teamwork, and sustainable thinking.
 

Future Outlook

The C-STONE marble coating has passed the CNS inspection standards for thin-coat textured decorative materials for indoor use, and the development research process and outcomes are recorded in detail in the specialized book "Design Driven Innovation: Materials Industry." In the future, it is hoped that this coating can be promoted and applied in more fields, deepening the general public's awareness of the circular economy through workshop activities and on-site demonstrations, and creating influential sustainable actions for Taiwan.