Hosted by Shenzhen Design Week & Global Design Award Organizing Committee, organized by China Merchants Shekou Holdings| Sea World Culture and Arts Center, and presented by Design Society, the Design Forum of 2020 Shenzhen Design Week takes Values of Design as its theme. A series of five symposiums will focus on five topics: Designing Social Distancing, Designing Museums for the Future, Designing Cities, Seeking the Invisible and The Observer of Commodity Chain. Taking place on every Saturday of August 2020, it will be joined by 25 leading figures from the global design scene. It is also a key program of Go online! Design Society (Go!DS). It aims to explore the impact and potentiality of design towards our society, urban development, culture, technology and manufacture.
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Values of Design Beyond the Pandemic
When the world is stepping into the new reality of post-coronavirus, what can design do to help us address challenges regarding our environment and ecology, our politics and values, and the various conflicts among different social communities? Through this forum, Design Society hopes to call for active recognition of the role and potential of design as well as wider creative practices.
Designing Social Distancing
Design has been gradually broadening its boundaries in recent years, breaking the limitation of physical products, into a mode of thinking and language, in which design takes the impact of society into account. For instance, in the process of rapid urbanization, there are increasing challenges for public wellbeing. Urban planning nowadays needs to consider new configurations of citizenship and neighborhood relationships.
Moderated by Ole Bouman, founding director of Design Society, this inaugural panel is joined by Joseph Grima, the creative director of the Design Academy Eindhoven and co-founder of the design research studio, Space Caviar; Richard van der Laken, the energetic engine behind both What Design Can Do and De Designpolitie; Liu Xiaodu, the principal architect and co-founder of URBANUS, the director of the Pingshan Art Museum; Alice Rawsthorn, the New York Times columnist and author of Design as an Attitude; and Deyan Sudjic, the director emeritus of the Design Museum in London and former editor of Domus magazine in Milan.
The panel will focus on how design has shown and proved its ever-expanding application to the general public -- it is not only a commercial product but also a powerful tool to deal with crisis, solve problems and depict the future. Under the current pandemic, designers begin to re-examine the values of design, for example, the design for social distancing and for emergency have become new design focuses.
Designing Museums for the Future
In 2018, Shenzhen published a plan for the "Ten Cultural Facilities of the New Era”, with an aim to allocate and create more spaces for culture and public education and to contribute to Shenzhen’s cultural mission. It is timely to discuss how to design and to programme museums.
Moderated by Zhao Rong, the deputy director of Design Society, Yuko Hasegawa, the artistic director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Kazuyo Sejima, Pritzker Architecture Prize winner and co-founder of SANAA; Sjarel Ex, Director of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Wenchian Shi, Partner in MVRDV; Claire Mckeown, Project Director for the V&A's East Bank; David Allin, an Associate Principal at Diller Scofidio + Renfro; Ole Bouman, the founding director of Design Society; and Tatsutomo Hasegawa, the Deputy Director of Maki and Associates will share their perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of designing and operating museums, and their visions about the role of museums and their architectures.
Designing Cities
Shenzhen transformed itself from a manufacturing city into a creative city by cultivating the medium of design, as well as the actual work of a variety of design practices. In this city design is integrated within its history and development, representing the concepts, values and aesthetics of its urban lifestyle.
As a part of the opening events for the 2020 Shenzhen Design Week, this forum will focus on how design activates urban development and how it brings opportunities to the city with a future-oriented approach. Dr. Han Wangxi, Director of Shenzhen Innovation & Creative Design Development Office; Jorn Konijn, head of program of the Dutch Design Week; Deniz Ova, Director of Istanbul Design Biennial at Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV); Sir John Sorrell, Co-founder and President of London Design Biennale, and Co-founder and Chairman of London Design Festival; and Marisa Yiu, the Co-founder and Executive Director of the DESIGN TRUST initiative will share their visions on the topic.
Seeking the Invisible
Driven by the power of science and technology, contemporary artists who work at the intersection between science and art, transform the invisible natural phenomena such as the geomagnetism, time and eye movements, into a tangible and sensible presentation. Their practice spawned the new inspirations and perceptions that can help us better understand the time and space that we are in.
Moderated by Gu Ling, the head of communications of Design Society, this forum invites artists Nelo Akamatsu and Akinori Goto; Mariano Sardón, professor and chair of the Electronic Art Degree at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero to demonstrate their unique practices. They all take a philosophical vision and human empathy as the starting points of design, applying professional skills and material innovation, utilizing the co-creation of humanities and technology, and drawing a pioneering spirit for the future of design.
The Observer of Commodity Chain
The value of design is not only about creating a beautiful appearance for the product, but also about optimizing the use of materials, processing methods and functions. For designers, the values of design reflected in rethinking existing manufacturing methods, improving the process and the production, and making the supply chain transparent.
Moderated by Siyun Tang, curator at Design Society, Brendan Cormier, a Senior Design Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum; Deng Qiyun, founder of Engraft and product designer; Formafantasma, an Italian-designers duo; Hao Zhenhan, artist; Thomas Thwaites, a designer and author of The Toaster Project and GoatMan to will share their critical reflections on the design industry. The speakers are skilled at using the integrated thinking of design to consider the whole life cycle of design. They establish connections between everyday life and the making, the styling and the materials to develop a more sustainable design practice.
During the same month of August, Values of Design: China in the Making is on shown in the V&A Gallery at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center. It is the first exhibition in China to explore the growing field of Chinese design and the first to attempt to understand how changing and evolving values are helping to shape what we design, produce and consume. Initiated and curated by Design Society, in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the exhibition continues the success of the institutions’ long-term partnership, and is a follow-up to Values of Design, the inaugural V&A Gallery exhibition produced by the V&A in collaboration with Design Society in 2017.
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List of speakers
Notes to Editors:
“Values of Design” Online Symposiums
2020 Shenzhen Design Week – Design Forum
16:00 – 18:30 (GMT+8) 1 August, 2020: Designing Social Distancing
19:00 – 21:30 (GMT+8) 8 August, 2020: Designing Museums for the Future
16:00 – 18:30 (GMT+8) 15 August, 2020: Designing Cities
19:00 – 21:00 (GMT+8) 22 August, 2020: Seeking the Invisible
16:00 – 18:30 (GMT+8) 29 August, 2020: The Observer of Commodity Chain
Format: Key-note presentation and Q&A
Language: Chinese and English with simultaneous translation
Livestreaming: http://live.bilibili.com/22388075
Guest speakers (in alphabetical order): David Allin, Tatsutomo Hasegawa, Yuko Hasegawa, Nelo Akamatsu, Brendan Cormier, Qiyun Deng, Sjarel Ex, Formafantasma, Joseph Grima, Dr. Han Wangxi, Zhenhan Hao, Akinori Goto, Jorn Konijn, Richard van der Laken, Liu Xiaodu, Claire Mckeown, Kazuyo Sejima, Deniz Ova, Alice Rawsthorn, Mariano Sardón, Wenchian Shi, Sir John Sorrell, Deyan Sudjic, Thomas Thwaites, Marisa Yiu
Hosted by: Shenzhen Design Week & Global Design Award Organizing Committee
Organizer: China Merchants Shekou Holdings| Sea World Culture and Arts Center
Presented by: Design Society
Guided by: Shenzhen International Culture Exchange Association, Shenzhen Innovation & Creative Design Development Office
Press Image Link: https://share.weiyun.com/xvqtk6xt
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Opening Hours:
Venue:
Monday - Sunday 10:00-22:00
Galleries:
Monday - Friday 10:00-19:00
Saturday - Sunday 10:00-21:00
Last admission: 30 minutes prior to closing.