Life and death (or decomposition) is a recurring theme in Khew’s work. As an architect, she spent many years in a field that values longevity and structural permanence. But with the growth of the human population and changing cultural habits, the need for structures that resist the passage of time has waned. Perfectly viable objects with years left of use get tossed, torn down, and labeled as trash.
According to recent studies, more than 30% of global waste comes from construction, creating an estimated 2.2 billion tons of waste annually (more than 600 million tons in the United States alone). Whether it’s flipping a house, accommodating urban sprawl, or building the latest, greatest, best new thing, the world is constantly mining more materials to keep up with demand.
This statistic—and the attendant accountability she felt as an architect creating structures that contribute to this waste—weighed heavily on Khew. “As a practitioner, as a designer, the act of creating something is problematic, because it produces more things in the world,” she said. “Any responsible designer will go through this conflict: Should I build more? Should I make more? How does one make without increasing the carbon footprint of the act of making?”
After a pivotal assignment to build housing on what was obviously polluted ground challenged Khew’s personal ethics, she left architecture, focusing instead on teaching, research, and developing her own projects aimed at mitigating waste and experimenting with materials grown in nature rather than mined from the earth. Among other biomaterials, mycelium ended up figuring prominently in her work thanks to its biodegradable, self-healing, and regenerative properties.
Around the same time, Wesleyan began offering an IDEAS (Integrated Design, Engineering, Arts & Society) minor, which would eventually be housed within the newly launched College of Design and Engineering Studies. When CoDES was looking for a professor to lead product design, Khew’s unique approach and wide-ranging experience—from architecture to art installations to materials-driven design of new products and tools—won her the position.
“Product Design was initiated to expand the design and engineering curriculum at Wesleyan and at the same time plug into the robust arts infrastructure already in place,” explained Director of CoDES and Professor of Art Elijah Huge. “Yu Nong had a history of collaborating with scientists. She was an ‘expansive designer’—having worked at a broad range of scales from small objects to buildings. That versatility seemed really well-suited to working with liberal arts students.”
In class, Khew imbues lessons on design with an approach that challenges her students to consider not only the form and function of their designs, but the full life cycle of their objects, including ecological impact over time and potential second or third lives after the initial use is exhausted.
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