Interview with The Designer of Olympic Medals Wang Yipeng
July 8, 2008 – 7:37 am
Wang Yipeng professor, vice president of design college of Central Acadamy of Fine Arts, director of No.2 studio and member of the medal designing team
How to resolve the problem that jade’s aptness to be broken?
Visionunion: We know the big problem occurs that jade is apt to be broken. How do you solve the problem?
Wang Yipeng: During the past sessions of the Olympic Games, some athletes were too excited to prevent themselves from radical behavior such as throwing medals away which will probably cause the medal falling to the ground. We know that jade is apt to be broken. To solve the problem, we practised to ensure the medal not break when falling from 2 meters above even the hardest floor. We tried with granite and ceramic tiles. The due period was two months.
When a medal falls to the ground, the situation that it touch on its side will occupy 90 percent among all the possibilities. Why don’t we cut a groove between metal and jade? The groove would act as a buffer sector. We put into the groove special material that is soft and strong in some degree. We cut metal as well as jade to create the buffer space. Finally we set the medal to be 6mm-thick and jade to be 3mm-thick. Then we put in the matereal, making it hardened and expanded. Thus it is tightened between metal and jade. The advantage lies in two aspects: all materials are fixed tight; the added material could act as a buffer when the medal hit the ground. Does it work? The answer is no while we practised. There is still a small disturbance remained that the space within the groove is not enough to buffer the hit. The space is also not to be too large which will appear no elegance. We tried to slope the groove to gain larger spaces inside. This special structure is easy to be talked about, yet we practised many times under great pressures.
Visionunion: When did the pressure get its most?
Wang Yipeng: The last half month. We faced great pressure because it might ruin the whole year of work that carried out by all of us if we could not complete the design. We revised our plans. I remembered that we made 18 plans to ensure success by all means. I suffered insomnia during that period. We kept trying and renovating. At last the problem was solved by carrying out one of those 18 plans. The process was recorded by video tapes. I submitted to the International Olympic Committee on Dec 28, with a week’s time reserved for the final fabricate. I thought that the medal should have emotions with me since I kept researching it for a year.
