“Chen Po-kun, Founder of CHENHOW MARBLE, is someone who is always willing to experiment and innovate. He transformed the showroom into a luxury gallery where exceptional stones are presented at their very best, while also bringing the space to life through events and collaborations, such as the project with athlete Lee Chih Kai. At CHENHOW MARBLE, stone is never simply placed on display as something cold and static. Events reveal new and unexpected dimensions of the material—and that, in itself, is a process of exploring possibilities.”
— Alex Yuan, Chairman of TnAID
Design Director of NEXT Design
As a designer, Design Director of NEXT Design, and Chairman of TnAID, Alex Yuan moves constantly between different roles, seemingly always switched “on.” For him, work is life and life is work, making time management one of his greatest challenges—and one of the lessons he repeatedly shares with the designers on his team.
Over the past six months, however, spending more time in Taiwan’s mountains and forests has led Alex towards a new philosophy of living: what he calls “the 50/50 philosophy of life.” The experience is gradually reshaping both the way he lives and the way he thinks about design.
For Alex and NEXT Design, that evolution is still very much in progress.
A Week in the Life of an Interior Designer
Weekdays
07:00 — Wake up, have breakfast with the children, and take them to school.
09:00 — Arrive at the office and move from one meeting to another.
19:00 — Finally return to his desk, where team members quickly gather with drawings and plans awaiting his review.
22:00 — Return home, listen to music, watch the news, and often join video meetings for TnAID.
Weekends
Saturday — Spend roughly half the day at the office catching up on miscellaneous work.
Sunday — A full day reserved for family.
The nature of interior design often blurs the boundary between work and life. Although Alex’s days rarely offer a clear moment to switch completely on or off, that same ambiguity allows him to experience life through his work.
“Whenever I accompany clients to look for furniture and art, I’m also discovering new and interesting things and experiencing the power of beauty. For me, that process is actually a form of relaxation.”
NEXT Design works extensively on hotel interiors and the public areas of residential and hospitality developments, which means Alex has frequently travelled both within Taiwan and abroad to study hotels firsthand.
For him, the key is learning to enjoy the coexistence of work and life—to immerse himself fully in a pleasant, comfortable environment and remain sensitive to the experience it creates. That sensitivity, in turn, often becomes a source of new ideas for design.
Image / A fresh and comfortable residence inspired by nature | NEXT Design
A Turning Point: Encountering the Mountains
Then COVID-19 disrupted everything.
No one remained untouched. Frequent business travel came to a halt, and Alex’s attention shifted closer to home. During this period, he began venturing into Taiwan’s mountains and wilderness.
“It was the first time I realised just how beautiful Taiwan’s mountains and forests really are.”
He encountered sunsets washing green forests in shades of orange and red, and seas of cloud draping white veils across towering peaks. The scenes felt almost unreal.
“But I really enjoy that feeling of being removed from reality.”
In the mountains, the view is reduced to sky, earth, and trees. The sounds are those of insects, birds, and leaves brushing against one another in the wind. With almost nothing artificial intruding upon the senses, everything seems to return to its simplest and most elemental state.
“When you’re out there, it may look as though you’re doing nothing, but inwardly you feel incredibly fulfilled.”
Alex laughs that when hunger strikes, there is still outdoor cooking to take care of, so there is rarely a chance to become bored.
Over the past six months, finding interesting routes to explore has become one of his greatest fascinations—from Xiaoyoukeng in Yangmingshan to forest roads in Hsinchu and Penglai Forest Road in Miaoli. Each landscape possesses a distinctive personality and its own reason to make visitors stop and linger.
Image / Bringing elements of the land into a commercial interior | NEXT Design
A Realisation: The 50/50 Philosophy of Life
The purity of nature gradually began to change Alex’s perspective.
Trees, he observes, may appear tall, solid, and rigid. Yet when you become still enough to watch them closely, their branches and leaves move with extraordinary softness in the wind.
That observation encouraged him to slow the machinery of his own life, even if only for half an hour at a time, and allow a different perspective to emerge.
“I’ve started thinking about a 50/50 philosophy of life. You have to let go of certain things before you can make room for something new.”
The idea is changing both the way Alex approaches people and the logic behind his interior design.
He acknowledges that his earlier design language tended to be more complex, often attempting to communicate a great deal of information at once.
“Going forward, I want my work to return to exploring the essentials—to make the experience purer, rather than simply pursuing sensory stimulation.”
In practical terms, this means allowing the designer to step slightly further into the background and leaving more room for the homeowner.
A space should be capable of evolving alongside the client’s life, giving them the freedom to introduce the things they love over time. Alex believes that whatever feels right for that particular stage of life may ultimately be the best design decision.
Image / Lakeshore Hotel Hualien Taroko — Ground-floor lobby | NEXT Design
Back to the Essentials: Unlocking the Potential of a Single Material
“When design returns to the essentials, it means using the inherent qualities of a material to tell a story, rather than layering together a complicated mix of different materials.”
Alex uses stone as an example.
Stone is often regarded as a symbol of luxury, with expansive natural veining that conveys a sense of rarity and distinction impossible to reproduce artificially. Yet remove its high gloss, transform the surface with an antiqued or matte finish, and rearrange individual pieces to alter the rhythm of colour and pattern, and the same material can begin to speak an entirely different design language.
This ability to reveal new possibilities within familiar materials reflects the sense of curiosity Alex consistently seeks to bring into his spaces.
“The essence of the stone hasn’t changed. Design simply allows it to communicate more ideas.”
Because of its natural veining, stone can already resemble a painting and possess an artistic quality of its own. Approached from the perspective of visual art, it can become whatever the designer imagines—from a sweeping, monumental landscape to something quiet, delicate, and intimate.
Alex has applied this approach in some of his signature hospitality projects for Lakeshore Hotel, using design to reveal unexpected expressions within the material itself.
Designers can give materials a new identity, but materials can also stimulate a designer’s imagination.
That was Alex’s reaction when he first saw the way CHENHOW MARBLE displayed its slabs upright, presenting each one like a luxury object while carefully considering the circulation and viewing experience of an art gallery.
“It looked incredible. I was genuinely moved. As designers, we can immediately see the strengths and qualities of each stone, and that stimulates the desire to design with it. To be honest, many designers don’t know exactly how they want to use a material until they actually see it. It’s a reciprocal process.”
Through CHENHOW MARBLE, Alex sees even greater possibilities for stone.
“CHENHOW MARBLE doesn’t see stone as simply stone. It sees it as something that can influence the way people live.”
Image / An annual celebration of design | Taiwan Design Week
Design Today: The Power of Collaboration
TnAID was established two decades ago to create stronger connections between designers and material suppliers. As the industry evolved, the organisation gradually expanded its approach, building collaborations across disciplines and inviting professionals from different sectors to share their perspectives.
The goal is to help designers develop capabilities beyond their professional design expertise—skills that enable them to manage companies and respond to broader changes in society.
Now serving as the association’s 11th Chairman, Alex continues to organise forums and lectures around the design industry while also focusing on a new challenge: building Taiwan Design Week into a stronger intellectual property and platform capable of generating wider influence and new opportunities.
“In the past, information wasn’t easily accessible, so the association’s role was largely about encouraging exchange. But we now live in a much flatter world where information is readily available. Beyond healthy competition, what matters more is bringing our individual strengths together, working as teams, and creating a shared identity that we can communicate to a wider audience. Once the IP becomes stronger, it can generate many more connections.”
For Alex, developing that IP represents the association’s next major challenge. It will not be easy, but he considers it essential.
The same collaborative thinking can be seen in Startup Terrace Kaohsiung, a major design and construction project involving multiple design teams, including NEXT Design, seed spacelab, and Boson Design.
The project required an enormous volume of rapidly exchanged information and frequent video meetings to integrate teams coming from different directions and establish a shared consensus.
“Designers have to learn how to break design down into components, while remaining adaptable themselves—almost like amoebas.”
Learning how to integrate oneself into a collaborative process is something Alex particularly wants younger designers to understand.
The era in which working alone was always the best solution, he believes, is over.
Image / Startup Terrace Kaohsiung | A collaborative project by multiple design studios
Epilogue
Having once worked as a travel editor, I found Alex’s description of the blurred boundary between work and life immediately familiar. Looking back on those years of constant travel, overflowing editorial plans, and seemingly endless writing assignments, the pace was exhausting—but it was also a period of extraordinary creative energy, as though I were a sponge that could never absorb enough.
Now, having co-founded a studio with partners, I have also come to understand just how deeply we have entered an era of collaboration—and both the difficulty and necessity of building intellectual property with lasting value.
Throughout our conversation, Alex’s observations consistently reflected the changes taking place around us. More importantly, however, he seemed to understand how to respond to those changes: by remaining adaptable, continuing to explore, and knowing when to let go in order to make room for something new.
