Design graduate student Harold Linde’s proposal, “Immersive Tea Experience Lab,” has been selected by The Green Initiative Fund Grant Committee to receive $20,000 in funding. 

The grant was a collaborative effort that included the participation of team members Elizabeth Marley (MFA/Design Candidate), Tracy Corado (MFA/Design Candidate), Junger Xia (BA/Design Candidate), and Linde (MFA/Design Candidate) in collaboration with faculty advisor Brett Snyder, M.Arch, Katharine P. Burnett, Ph.D., Founding Director, Global Tea Initiative for the Study of Tea Culture and Science, and Carmia Feldman, Assistant Director, UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden and the Arboretum staff. 

Linde designs and curates Immersive Tea Experiences (I.T.E.) to inspire greater presence, connection and awe for diverse participants. He has studied tea ceremony in Miaoli, Taiwan and completed multiple tea-focused workshops and trainings through Global Tea Hut, World Tea Expo and the UC Davis Global Tea Initiative.

He views contemporary tea ritual as a beneficial, humanistic technology to counter-balance our collective oversaturation of digital technology/virtual-based realities and foster greater wonder in everyday experiences.

Elizabeth Marley’s previous work has included residential and commercial architecture, public art, renewable energy systems, modular structures and community building. She has collaborated with such visionary design groups as Rebar, Flux Foundation, and Peralta Hacienda Historical Park. Marley is currently investigating emergent design methods and notions of place and culture on environmentally compromised public land at UC Davis. Marley earned her undergraduate degree in Architecture (B.Arch) from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and is currently an MFA/Design candidate.

Tracy Corado designs community engagement experiences to connect urban communities to natural environments. Her research focuses on expanding inclusivity during the community engagement phase of urban development projects. She has designed a variety of high-end residential & commercial interior architectural projects throughout Los Angeles and hand-crafted visual displays for commercial retail clients and public museum exhibitions. Corado is currently designing graphic interventions to gather community input for revitalization projects targeting underused public spaces in Sacramento. She is a first-year MFA/Design candidate.

Junger Xia is a third-year undergraduate student double-majoring in Design and Economics. Born in China, Xia has been studying in the U.S. for the last seven years. Her current research focuses on interior architecture design, cross-cultural collaborations and the aesthetic practices of interior space. After graduating, she intends to continue her research in an MFA program in Interior Architecture.

Harold Linde designs and facilitates Immersive Tea Experiences (I.T.E.) to generate presence, connection and wonder for diverse audiences during this time of digital media proliferation, climate chaos and growing social alienation. He has previously designed and facilitated immersive tea experiences at TEDxUCLA, TEDxVeniceBeach, BlueMind Malibu Colloquium, UC Davis Open Studios and Summit LA17 & LA18. He has studied tea in Taiwan and attended tea-focused conferences, lectures and workshops via World Tea Expo, Global Tea Hut, and the UC Davis Global Tea Initiative and is currently a Design MFA/Design candidate. 

The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) promotes sustainable development by providing necessary funding to the UC Davis community. TGIF involves and educates students of all backgrounds by empowering them to develop, propose, and enact sustainable projects on campus.