With a background in graphic design, urban planning, and architecture, Candy likes to make cities more accessible and engaging through research, design, and the creative use of public space. She recently founded an organization called Civic Center that champions civic engagement through stories, services, products, and public installations.

She is a 2009 TED Global Fellow and has worked in Johannesburg, New Orleans, Vancouver, Nairobi, and New York City on collaborative projects with residents, community organizations, and local government. She was an art director at The New York Times, a fellow at the Spatial Information Design Lab, a researcher at the Infrastructure and Poverty Action Lab, and a project associate for Global Studio. Thanks to synthesizers and nerdy software she performed music in NYC, Detroit, and Grenoble and co-founded a design house/record label called Red Antenna. Her projects have been featured at the Center for Architecture, an airport in Russia, and several seedy basements.

After her parents immigrated from Taiwan, Candy was born in the steel city of Pittsburgh and lived in Lima, Exeter, Ann Arbor, and New York City. She currently lives in Helsinki where she’s been developing the future of Nokia Money through ethnography field research and design thinking. In the nocturnal hours she’s also working on a community installation in Turku, a neighbor resource-sharing tool for GOOD Magazine, a service for neighborhood business development, and a graphic novel about master planner Robert Moses and community leader Jane Jacobs. She likes synthesizers, dancing, and world’s fairs and takes around 1,000 photos every month. She’s Asian. It’s in her blood…

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EDUCATION

M.S. Urban Planning
Columbia University, 2007

B.F.A. Graphic Design
University of Michigan, 2001

B.S. Architecture
University of Michigan, 2001

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TROPHIES

2010
Suburban Artist-in-Residence, Turku, Finland

2009
TED Global Fellow

2008
Center for Urban Pedagogy Making Policy Public Fellowship

2008
Sappi Ideas That Matter Grant

2008
Global Studio Johannesburg Fellowship

2007
Columbia University Urban Planning Award for Outstanding Contribution to Leadership in Planning Education

2007
Global Studio Johannesburg Fellowship

2007
Infrastructure and Poverty Action Lab Fellowship

2006
Spatial Information Design Lab New Orleans Fellowship

2006
Global Studio Vancouver Fellowship

2003
American Design Award

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EXHIBITS

Upcoming: National Design Triennial
Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. New York NY. May 2010
Featuring Guide to Street Vending in NYC

Poster4Tomorrow
Amsterdam, Ankara, Beirut, Belgrade, Brussels, Chungnam, Derry, Heidelberg, La Paz, Lima, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Marrakech, Milan, Montreal, Paris, Quito, Seville, Stockholm, Tbilisi, Vienna, December 2009
Featured Speak Out For Those Who Can’t

Global Polis
Center for Architecture. New York NY. May 2009
Featured Million Dollar Blocks and the Guide to Street Vending in NYC

@
Sci-Arc . Los Angeles CA. February 2009
Featured Post-it Notes for Neighbors

Global Studio
Customs House . Sydney Australia . December 2008
Featured Global Studio

Figment
Governors Island NY . June 2008
Featured The Pedestrian Timeline

Windows Brooklyn
Brooklyn NY . June 2008
Featured I’ve Lived: Post-it Notes for Neighbors

Illuminators
Koltsovo International Airport, Yekaterinburg Russia . April-June 2008
Featured Hours Away: Maps for Airports

Conflux Festival
Brooklyn NY . September 2007
Featured Cripplebush Ghost Tour

American Planning Association National Conference
San Antonio TX . April 2006
Featured Brooklyn Bridge Wayfinding

Skinless Capital: Neoliberalism and Resistance
OPENSOURCE . Champaign-Urbana IL . Apr–May 2005
Featured Freedom Butter and Project Moustache

Stick Up, New York!
New York, London, Berlin, Tokyo . Jan–Mar 2005
Featured Scenes from Grand City

Meanwhile
Tonic . New York NY . May 2003
Featured Alphagirls

Bloom: Flora and Electronics in Nine Parts
Taubman Gallery . Ann Arbor MI . May–Jun 2001
Featured video art installation

The Future and the City
5th International Festival for Architecture in Video . University of Florence . Florence Italy . Nov–Dec 2000
Featued video art installation created under Martha Skinner of fieldoffice

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TALKS

Upcoming: TYPO Berlin International Design Conference
Speaker . Berlin . May 2010

TED Global Conference
TED Fellows talk, Main stage talk . Oxford UK . July 2009

Aalto University School of Science and Technology
Guest lecturer, Sustainable Global Technologies . Helsinki . April 2009

Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
Global Studio, Lectures in Planning . NYC . February 2007

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PRESS

CLAM Magazine
Ailleurs
Issue 20 Spring 2010

WIRED UK
TED Fellows Special Profile: Local Hero
December 2009

BLDGBLOG
A User’s Guide to New York City pt. 2: Street Vendor Guide
A User’s Guide to New York City pt. 1: Tenants’ Right Flash Cards
December 2009

TYPO Magazine
Infographics—Myth and Meaning by Jan Middendorp
Issue 35 Spring 2009

Visual Communication Quarterly
Analog Interactivity issue
Spring 2009

The New York Times
Visual Aids for the Pushcart World by Saki Knafo
April 3, 2009

Communication Arts
July/August 2009

DailyCandy
Spray Paint the Town: A Year in Street Art from the Wooster Collective
December 31, 2008

Geez Magazine
Art Digest
Issue 9, Spring 2008

Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design
by Chen Design Associates
2006, Cincinnati: How Books
Featured Typography record packaging

The Question of New Orleans
by the Spatial Information Design Lab
2006, New York: Columbia University
Featured Million Dollar Blocks

Stickers!: From the First International Sticker Awards
2006, Berlin: Gestalten Verlag
Featured Project Moustache

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TEN MOVIES

The City of Lost Children
Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro

Rear Window
Alfred Hitchcock

Royal Tenenbaums
Wes Anderson

Goodfellas
Martin Scorsese

Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola

Boogie Nights
Paul Thomas Anderson

Hudsucker Proxy
Joel Coen

The Prestige
Christopher Nolan

New York: A Documentary Film
Ric Burns

Singin’ in the Rain
Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly

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TEN BOOKS

A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway

Devil in the White City
Erik Larson

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth
Chris Ware

White Noise
Don DeLillo

The Orchid Thief
Susan Orlean

Tender is the Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald

Midnight’s Children
Salman Rushdie

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist
Peter Hall, ed.

The Little Prince
Antoine Saint-Exupery

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TEN SONGS

The Chase
Giorgio Moroder

Space Oddity
David Bowie

Beat Street
Grandmaster Flash

These Days
Nico

Je t’aime… moi non plus
Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin

Spacer Woman
Charlie

Tour de France
Kraftwerk

What’s Going On
Marvin Gaye

Time of the Season
The Zombies

Shook Ones Pt. II
Mobb Deep

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TEN PEOPLE

Charles and Ray Eames

William Whyte

Chris Ware

Edward Tufte

Josef Muller-Brockmann

Tibor Kalman

Claes Oldenburg

Alfred Hitchcock

Daniel Burnham

Buckminster Fuller