DESIGN SHENZHEN – INNOVATIONS FOR FUTURE LIVING: DESIGN SOLUTIONS FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

Text & Images courtesy of Design Shenzhen

Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center: 9-12 December, 2021

Design Shanghai, Shenzhen China

With over 150 world-class brands and installations, Design Shenzhen will be the largest curated event of its kind ever seen in the city. Global talent recognises Shenzhen as the city of the future; acclaimed brands participating include Carl Hansen & Søn, Baxter, Moroso, Cappellini, Ligne Roset, Moooi, Scavolini, Duravit, Villeroy & Boch, Yohji Yamamoto, Caesarstone and 101 Copenhagen amongst many others. Iconic Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto joins – among others – grand disruptor of Italian design Gaetano Pesce, visionary innovator Carlo Ratti and radical urbanists MVRDV in the show’s influential Forum programme.

Wanders’ Tulip Armchair by Cappellini, presented by ADC (Shenzhen Art Design Center)

Formalia bathroom by SCAVOLINI, presented by Living Italy

Tebe Side Table by BAXTER, presented by ADC (Shenzhen Art Design Center)

Set to inspire the global stage, Design Shenzhen draws from its rich pool of creative talent to introduce its 2021 Features section that will present an all-round design feast from various fields such as installation design, interior design, home design, industrial design, design awards, art and graphic design. Shenzhen’s design pioneers and cultural leaders will each propose their take on future living, a didactic space for visitors to pause and explore the future of living and design for longevity.

Future Home
Eight leaders from Shenzhen in the fields of interior design, home design, industrial design, art and graphic design have come together to create one of the largest features of the show ‘Future Home’, a showcase of inspirational concepts for the home of the future.

Located in the entrance of the exhibition hall, the concept instigates immediate thought and sets the tone for the rest of the show – forward thinking, cutting edge design for the future with a reflection on how one lives. The first concept ‘Open The Box, Out of The Box’ is delivered by HongKo. This metaphoric space invites visitors to immerse themselves through thought and each mirror, tableware and chair contains an independent world, waiting to be opened.

‘Open The Box, Out of The Box’ by HongKo

‘Xiao Huan Xiu’ by Zhongwei Hu

The second concept ‘The Art Labyrinth of Minos’ by Luowei Lin addresses the answers to future living. A maze, designed to question the meaning of life and stands as a symbol of human existence, is also a gallery space to experience paintings by contemporary oil painter Wang Feifan. Just as we struggle to navigate through life with every twist and turn, visitors will experience this by navigating through the maze.

Presented by Coulisse | INK

The third concept speaks to landscaping and the contemporary garden, an important and vital space for any home. Zhongwei Hu will use environmentally friendly recycled materials to construct a space inspired by the ‘Mountain Villa with Embracing Beauty’ garden in Suzhou. The designer re-interprets this classic masterpiece with current craftsmanship and materials, and strives to present a contemporary Garden in the Yangtze River Delta, marrying the past and the new.

Franci Fung X Tommi Zhou have created the fourth concept ‘Diadromy’. This area focuses on the recycling of old building materials, re-fusion, transformation, and utilization, so that these materials will have new value. The designers see the reincarnation of materials draw a parallel to the periodic movement of fish migration. The space therefore integrates used materials from APark, a factory in Shenzhen, to make modular furnishings. The concept includes recycled lamp tubes from the former factory building which have been controlled to mimic fish swimming. A new material formed from the demolished factory bricks builds different chairs, tables, bar counters for visitors to sit and pause and see the power of reusing materials to protect the environment. After the exhibition, these pieces will be introduced into Apark-HEA (a new commercial building). The layout of the exhibition hall will also use plates made of recycled marine waste plastic.

‘Diadromy’ by Franci Fung X Tommi Zhou

‘BAO GAI TOU’ by FuChiao Chan

Wang Peng questions what makes up a home? for the fifth concept. Six major brands in the field have been invited by Peng to create their interpretation of ‘home’, these include Amina, Berti, CETTIG, Colorificio Veneziano, Ferrosmith and Junmei Stone.

A prevalent question in today’s society of what we really need in our homes is addressed by FuChiao Chan for the sixth concept of ‘Future Home’. FuChiao Chan will deconstruct the home, evaluating the functionality and space of the 21st century home and evaluate what factors we really need in the future. The new proposed design hopes to throw out tangible spatial issues, allowing visitors to reflect on their own imagination of home.

‘Vanishing Space’ by Henk will invite British brand MYLANDS and many other major brands to blur the boundaries between architecture, interior and landscape, let ‘nature’ intervene in space and explore the relationship between man and nature in the future. Designers have been invited to break boundaries, explore alternative possibilities from typical home and spatial design. The project uses the five human senses to simulate nature: light, insect sounds, water ripples, fog and other materials. Visitors will gradually get lost in this fusion field, indulge in it and perceive a three-dimensional future world, a world where man and nature get along.

‘Vanishing Space’ by Henk

‘Yin and Yang’ by HUOMA x JANTA

Design studios HUOMA and JANTA have come together to create the final concept of Future Home, ‘Yin and Yang’. Inspired by the two films ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Creed’, the designers intend to blur the boundaries of space and time, expressing their own understanding of design and imagination of the future. Video animation on the wall and mirroring around will cause visitors to become disorientated as they navigate through the space. HUOMA and JANTA want visitors to question how they will think about people and life in this space where only they are left.

Smart Home
Haohaozhu (好好住) is a home improvement and interior design platform that offers a social and information sharing community for the design industry. It will collaborate with Professor Yanmin Zhou from Tsinghua University to curate the exhibition ‘China’s Housing Revolution’. It will also fuse the trend of ‘Smart Life’ and ‘China Chic’ to create an immersive home experience space at Design Shenzhen, recreating typical areas of the home in collaboration with leading technology brands such as Sony, Panasonic, Siemens, Sonos, Bose and Miele to present cutting-edge solutions in a concept for future living, aimed at an emerging young generation who are driven by convenience.

DavidHugh
DavidHugh, a multi-disciplinary team of design-led disruptive thinkers, focusing on science and wellness, will bring together technology, science and design to inspire, motivate and inform on how to create healthier spaces and experiences for daily living. DavidHugh will explore the optimal solution for people to co-exist with the environment and technology in the curated ‘WellConnect’ feature area. Led by the company’s Co-Founder Dr. David Wickett, who has spent 20 years developing new ways to converge science with design, DavidHugh brings together furniture design, biomedical engineering, and neuroscience, to create impactful wellness solutions, and thus to help shape the future of health and wellbeing. ‘WellConnect’ will focus on new ways of living in forward-thinking home and work spaces, exploring the human connection to technology and presenting innovative lighting solutions for health and wellbeing.

‘WellConnect’ feature presented by DavidHugh at Design Shenzhen

Good Design Select from Good Design Awards
Founded in Japan, the prestigious awards programme Good Design Awards will debut in China for the first time at Design Shenzhen with its feature Good Design Select. Good Design Select will present twenty cutting edge, award-winning design pieces that have won Japan’s G MARK Long Life Design Award. These pieces are widely recognised by users, some being household names and items including the signature Casio watch, Adidas’ Stan Smith trainer and the iconic PlayStation controller. The showcase will highlight pieces from international talent who have designed iconic global products that convey timeless design, longevity and that reflect comprehensive design values and principles that aim to enrich lives, industries and society. This is another moment in the show where visitors will pause to think about the relationship between good design and life, recognising many items they may already own that still stand so prevalent in today’s market. The Good Design Select section will be curated by Industrial designer Xiaoxi Shi alongside G-MARK. Japan’s G Mark’s Long Life Design Award aims to commend designers whose work play a vital role in shaping the future.

Good Design Select at Design Shenzhen

COCO Park Design Festival
To commemorate the launch of Design Shenzhen and in celebration of its 15th Anniversary, Shenzhen’s commercial landmark and large-scale fashionable shopping mall, Futian Xinghe COCO Park, will host a satellite event in collaboration with Design Shenzhen with two large-scale public installations to engage the local community and beyond. Chinese architecture studio ORIA will present ‘COCO UNIVERSE’, a geometric and skeletal sculpture, extruding light from its core in a play on the concepts of energy and the universe. The shell-like structure will surround a glowing central point, which will illuminate the surrounding area.

COCO UNIVERSE, an installation by ORIA for Design Shenzhen

By using 15 pieces of Chinese calligraphy paper, Shanghai-based architectural firm, EVA Architects have created a hidden oasis and intimate public space to celebrate the 15th anniversary of COCO PARK, ‘15’. Secluded inside this sacred white space are symbolic layers of mountains, misty clouds and a wish to pause and reconnect with nature and our surroundings. The layered papers mimic Chinese landscape paintings, with the silhouette of each paper creating light and shadow effects to evoke the feeling of calm. The layered papers have purposely divided the space into different sections so while travelling inside, visitors can explore different areas, and see different perspectives and viewpoints so that each visitor has an individualised and personal experience of the installation.

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LOCATION
Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center Futian District, Shenzhen, China

OPENING DAYS/TIMES
09.12.2021: Thursday 09:00 – 21:00 10.12.2021: Friday 09:00 – 18:00 11.12.2021: Saturday 09:00 – 18:00 12.12.2021: Sunday 09:00 -18:00