Design Shenzhen, the new chapter in the story of Design Shanghai, postponed to 2022
Shenzhen, in the far south of China, just a few kilometers from Hong Kong, over 35 years has grown to become the reference city for the design industry, both for China and for many designers and architects from all over the world. Shenzhen is home to some of the most innovative companies in the design and technology sector, such as Tencent, which invented WeChat. In addition to the headquarters of TikTok, many cultural institutions have landed in Shenzhen, such as London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. The International Art Design Center has become home to many of Italy’s top design brands, so it was quite normal for Shenzhen to host a new design platform, Design Shenzhen.
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The first edition of Design Shenzhen, to be held at the Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center, will host over 150 international brands including Ligne Roset, Moooi, Scavolini, Duravit, Villeroy & Boch, Yohji Yamamoto, Caesarstone and many others. For companies nowadays Shenzhen represents a new gate to the Chinese market.
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In addition to the trade fair, Design Shenzhen offers a rich program of installations and exhibitions in collaboration with Good Design Select, RIBA, Beijing Contemporary. Thanks to these partnerships, there will be exhibitions such as Future Home, where several designers will present their proposals for the house of the future.
Moreover, the Design Forum will invite 40 eminent architects, product and interior designers from different parts of the world. Among them, Gaetano Pesce, Italian architect and pioneer of 20th-century design; Carlo Ratti, architect, engineer, MIT professor; Benjamin Hubert, London-based designer founder of Layer Benjamin Hubert; Satoshi Ohashi, from Zaha Hadid Architects; Steven Smit, director of MVRDV Asia architecture and urbanism practice. Alongside these pioneers in design and architecture, the forum will also be a stage for emerging and local designers to share their ideas and showcase their contributions to the design field.
Institutions will bring to Design Shenzhen several special events including the Japanese award Good Design Select, which will debut in China; British-based RIBA will bring to Design Shenzhen the China Architect 100 program; lastly, Beijing Contemporary will present artworks from over 10 galleries exploring the fusion of contemporary art and design.
