Chen Chen

Chen Chen (born 07 January 1985) is a Chinese American designer and co-founder of Chen Chen & Kai Williams based in New York City.

Early Life

Chen was born in Shanghai, China and came to the United States in 1991 where he lived in Laramie, Wyoming for 4 years while his father got his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry. In 1995 his family immigrated to Toronto, Canada where they lived in the North York borough before moving back to the United States and settling in River Edge, New Jersey in 2001.

Education

Chen graduated from The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, USA with a bachelor's degree in industrial design. He also studied abroad at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Chen met Kai Williams in 2004 while in History of Industrial Design class together. Other notable classmates in the Industrial Design department include Greg Buntain and Ian Collings who formed Fort Standard, Pat Kim}, Kiel Mead of [http://www.americandesignclub.com American Design Club}, and [http://bbtcreative.com Brendan Timmins

Career

Chen worked at the design store and gallery Moss from 2007 - 2011 where he worked with Murray Moss on how objects were to be composed and installed. Part of the job was to print the blurb that went with every object in the store. While eventually an interface where the product code would generate the blurb, for the first 2 years all the descriptions were stored in alphabetical order in Word documents. This meant memorizing the product name, designer and manufacturer of every object in Moss.

While at Moss, Chen had a small studio near where Kai Williams had a CNC fabrication shop and would often go there to use the larger machinery. During these visits talk began about working on some collaborative projects which eventually resulted in the two starting a design studio together.