A carnival of "cross-border cross-circle New Year's Eve"

For the first time, this year's design week uses urban public space to curate exhibitions, so that shopping malls "cross-border" into exhibition halls.

The 2022 New Year's Day holiday has a new way to play. On January 3, 2022, the important international brand cultural event 2021 Shenzhen Design Week was closed. In the past 10 days, the number of visitors has exceeded 400,000. Five core sections, more than 20 exhibition units, 8 forums, design heat wave swept the city, participated in design week activities, and became a new way for people to play in the New Year's Eve in 2022. Not only that, this year's design week for the first time using urban public space curation, so that shopping malls "cross-border" into exhibition halls. This is a design week that breaks down industry barriers across professional circles, allowing design to avoid professional self-amusement and integrate into public life with an interactive attitude.

The publicity of the design

Making shopping malls "art galleries"

In the atrium of The Shenzhen Uptown Shopping Center, there is the theme interpretation exhibition "Exploring fields and lookout towers" created by Liu Xiaodu, one of the co-curators of this year's Design Week. In order to design week theme logo "S" and "?" At the end of the interwoven exhibition path, a transparent tower with a vertical view guides the direction of the various exhibition halls of the Design Week, and the narrative experience of the Design Week begins.

Most of the exhibition halls in the shopping mall are independent exhibition spaces packaged by shops, including "When Moving Towards the New Campus - Shenzhen New Campus Action Plan Three-Season Group Exhibition", "Between Bricks and Tiles: Shenzhen Public Building Special Exhibition", "Narrative of Architectural Image Field", "AI in Design", "Useless Use", "Home Lifestyle in the Post-epidemic Era", "Invitation Exhibition of Designers of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area "S" Super Symbol, etc. On the transparent shop glass, the visual elements and design themes of each exhibition are attached, and the projection of life images is projected on the glass to create a cinematic texture.

The shopping mall is plastered with various theme logos, and the advertising flag hanging high on the ceiling is also the picture of the theme logo. For ordinary citizens, this is undoubtedly a different kind of New Year's Eve carnival.

In addition to the "box" of the shopping mall, there is an outdoor town, because the colorful façade of the building has become a favorite punch card place for Internet celebrities. During Design Week, it became a unique venue. The walls and images of the town became the canvases of the artists, and the installation art stood in small squares and laneways, and when it turned between the corners, it would violently pass by the exhibits.

"This is Design Week's move from niche, elite, professional, professional to the city." Zhang Yuxing, co-curator of this year's Design Week, said, "Nowadays, the topic of design has reached thousands of households, and design has become closely related to everyone, from architecture, to clothing, to home to all product types, design has become a complete part of daily life from luxury goods and scarce goods." In this way, if the design is still closed to do the professional circle of things, it is a danger to the design itself, because the designer usually cannot face the public. ”

Interactivity of the design

Let the design exhibition have a dialogue with the public

Curator Gao Shaokang, a representative of Hong Kong designers, not only teamed up with more than a dozen children's artists and Zigong Lantern Club technicians to create an interactive light installation "Shine! Children crossing the ancient capital!", and also invited some Hong Kong designers to participate in the Shenzhen Design Week. Gao Shaokang said that the interactive installations "Naughty Xian shan" and "Interactive Shenzhen" were written by Hong Kong architects Ruan Wentao and Ip Xiaoka. The particularly concerned work "Naughty Immortal Mountain" is a huge inflatable "toy", children and friends can freely jump and play in it, while Ye Xiaoka's "Interactive Shenzhen" is based on Shenzhen, using the Shenzhen metro map to represent the city, and the columnar tumbler represents high-rise buildings and people's different lives, "Both works pay great attention to the interaction between people." ”

The relationship between people, between people and the city, with nature, and between people and life is all of Gao Shaokang's concern. He also invited Yuan Siliang to bring the "One Night Table" work. The work is selected on the trail connecting the shopping mall and the park, and on the sloped terrain, the traditional custom of "meandering water flowing" is reproduced in a modern way. "It's the participation that design creates, the beauty of life that comes with it, and at the same time it gives people a sense of communication." Gao Shaokang said.

The "Design Movement Force" is a long-term and continuous plan, bringing together 200 designers from all over Asia to discuss how to encourage and support the theme of sports and the Olympic Games through design, to think about the participation of the whole people, and to express support for Olympic athletes under the epidemic. During Design Week, spectators can interact under miniature table tennis tables and basketball hoops to trigger different viewing sensations. This is also another kind of co-creation and expression.

Gao Shaokang said that in shopping malls such as Shenye Shangcheng, many parents will bring their children to visit these works while visiting the mall. I think the design is characterized by interactivity, and with the audience, the work will naturally exude interesting attraction.

It is also with the participation of the public in mind that a new look of design has been created. On the "Field" of the theme interpretation exhibition "Exploring the Field and the Tower of Observation" created by Liu Xiaodu, the children are excitedly climbing up and down and exploring their exploration; on Ruan Wentao's "Naughty Immortal Mountain", the inflatable artwork has become a soft huge space toy that can be played, and adults and children run and jump, bounce and play on it; the work of "Winter Aluminum Garden + Carton Plug-in Artist", a leisure space quickly built by aluminum frames, with colorful flags and green plants on it, and different seats under it, has become a new leisure space for people The famous architect Zhang Yonghe's work "Bright Hall and Dark Passage", architecture and painting interaction, viewer interaction with exhibition...

It is precisely because of this openness and co-creation that this year's Design Week has moved from professional exhibition halls to commercial spaces, from circles to the public, and has become a city mobilization with design as the theme, a dialogue between design and the public, and a New Year's Eve carnival in the name of design.

Thematic nature of the design

Different design schemes express different urban spirits

Architect Liu Xiaodu is another co-curator of this year's Design Week. He said at the closing forum that design exhibitions are difficult to do, and it is often difficult to do well because it is difficult to have a particularly pleasant state at the expo. "Taking architectural design as an example, its exhibits are basically some models and pictures, which may be slightly thin, and occasionally you can see some architect manuscripts to deeper understand the traces of design." Liu Xiaodu said, "Therefore, it is not simple to design an exhibition to look good. We hope that through curating, the content under the same dimension can be narrated by designers of different categories and see inspired exchanges between different designers. ”

Therefore, under the theme of "Design Solving Problems", the five core sections under the Design Week can be said to clearly see the curators' concepts - "Design Empowers Urban Governance", "Design Updates Urban Space", "Design Traces Contemporary Aesthetics", "Design Exploration Frontier Trends", and "Design Upgrading Product Innovation".

The Design Week presents a sprinkling of exhibits, looking back and forth from a small dimension what Liu Xiaodu calls "inspirational exchanges between different designers", and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Designers " S" Super Symbol Invitation Exhibition is a particularly good perspective. With Shenzhen as the theme, design as the theme, and "S" as the visual element, the artists present different works that express diversity and imagination. The famous Hong Kong designer Jin Daiqiang used two flat graphics to hang back-to-back hanging free rotation to bring prospering visual imagery; Shenzhen sculptor Dai Yun brought the "seat" style "S"; Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Liu Qingyuan and Xie Linghui responded to the theme with black and white woodcut combined with digital micro-spray technology, exploring the innovative value of traditional art... Under one symbol, different design solutions are used to express different urban spirits.

As Cui Cancan, the host of the closing forum and a famous art curator, said, the exhibition has two functions, one is the relationship between the exhibition and the times, under the changes of the times, how designers redefine the concept of expanding design, and the other is to reflect the relationship with the city and the consciousness of design as a discipline and social function. "I saw a kind of historical ambition during Design Week."

Written by: Nandu reporter Huang Lu

Photo: Nandu reporter Liu Youzhi