Cao Zhen

    caozhen0806@126.com

    SHENZHEN is home to 6,000 design companies, which employ more than 60,000 people, and was titled the City of Design by UNESCO in 2008. Despite its rapid growth in design, Shenzhen still lacks a place that can record its design development, empower the inter-connectivity between design and industries and be a source of inspiration for the design communities in China.

    This is what the founders, partners and developers of Design Society aim to make. Due to open to the public in 2017, Design Society is a cultural hub inside the Sea World Culture and Arts Center, which is under construction in Shekou. Founded by China Merchants Shekou Holdings, in association with founding partner the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) from London, Britain, Design Society will comprise the Shekou Design Museum, within which the V&A will have a dedicated gallery, a theater, a multi-purpose hall and the Shenzhen Guanfu Museum.

    The Shekou Design Museum is still in the design stages. The V&A gallery in Shekou will display the 20th- and 21st-century international designs, as well as several examples from earlier historical periods, drawn from the V&A’s major collections including fashion, photography, furniture, product and graphic design, theater and performance.

    The Shenzhen Guanfu Museum will feature ancient Chinese arts and crafts.

    The whole Design Society will show groundbreaking designs from the past, present and future.

    For Ole Bouman, director of Design Society, display is not the final option for museums. The former director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute, also the creative director of the 2013 Bi-City Biennale of UrbanismArchitecture (UABB), has been based in Shenzhen for a year to prepare the project. He had frequently collaborated with the Shenzhen design community since 2009.

    “It will be less irrelevant for a city like Shenzhen to have a traditional design museum by presenting graphic designs, industrial designs, interior designs, the typical disciplinary distinctions of designs. Shenzhen is rapidly progressing, which is in great need of strong ideas. Starting a museum is about breaking through the boundaries of all disciplines and trying to investigate the role of design intelligence for the city. Design intelligence is a much broader concept than design as artifact. Design intelligence tends to do with a way of thinking. That is something Shenzhen can benefit from and Shenzhen has already that kind of thinking very much.

    “Shenzhen is a city of new commerce. People every day wake up, thinking about how to create that day, not just to survive the day but to make that day. That’s a spirit that is very close to the world of design. How to create your day, your time, your work and your relationships? That is kind of maker spirit I see in Shenzhen, so a design museum for Shenzhen in that respect is relevant,” Bouman told the Shenzhen Daily in an exclusive interview.

    With this vision, Design Society is an open and collaborative platform, including education and public event programs. “Design Society’s model is very synergetic. Through design, we will encourage dialogue and collaboration to express the potential of how design can positively impact the social, cultural and environmental challenges of our age,” said Bouman.

    The Design Society project is the first cooperation between a Chinese enterprise and a British museum based on a five-year contract. The V&A is giving curatorial advice to support new acquisitions and training in operations. Two major touring exhibitions will be held in Shenzhen in 2017 and 2018.

    According to Tim Reeve, deputy director and chief operating officer of the V&A, the exhibits in the V&A Gallery in Shekou will include a chandelier that unites nature and lighting technology, a meticulously embellished Christian Dior dress, an Iranian astrolabe dating from 1650 to 1800, an Egyptian water filter made between 900 and 1200 to the latest Shenzhen drone technology.

    “One of my favorite objects is a poster printed with Zimbabwean banknotes, which illustrates hyperinflation in Zimbabwe. The banknotes are almost worthless and the paper the banknotes were printed on is worth more than the banknotes themselves,” said Reeve in an exclusive interview with the Shenzhen Daily.

    “The idea is to expose objects that really speak to the concept of the gallery, which is about value and how values drive design. We have a value about cost, a value about problem-solving and a value about wonder. All these things are going to make the form of design. That’s the idea of the V&A.”

    Luisa E. Mengoni, a curator from the V&A, is the head of the V&A Gallery in Shekou. A Ph.D. holder in Chinese archaeology, having curated for the British Museum and speaking fluent Mandarin, Mengoni has been based in Shenzhen since 2014 to facilitate the V&A’s contribution to the project. Her team has visited many Shenzhen creative professionals, academics, educators and entrepreneurs during the past two years to develop a closer dialogue with local communities.

    “There’s a distinction between the V&A’s institutional relationship with China and its personal relationship. For institutional, we have a very long relation with China, going right back to the mid of the 19th century. The V&A has amazing collections of over 18,000 Chinese objects, covering 3,000 years of Chinese history. For personal, doing audience research is really fundamental for us,” he said. “Consumer satisfaction in a museum is a relatively new concept but is increasingly important. It comes from training, having very trained and knowledgeable staff. Staff are there not only to guard and protect the collections but to explain and interpret the collections,” said Reeve.

    As the world’s largest museum of decorative arts and design, the V&A has a keen interest in researching Chinese designs in recent years. In 2008, the “China Design Now” exhibition was presented at the V&A in London, featuring designs by emerging and established Chinese designers from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. “Rapid Response” was a small display curated by Kieran Long as part of the 2013 UABB in Shenzhen, showcasing Shenzhen factory and migrant workers’ items in the 1980s. Last year, a Shenzhen middle school uniform was displayed at the V&A in London.

    “These objects tell us something very interesting about what’s happening in this part of China. The exhibits, especially the Shenzhen school uniform, are about the way Shenzhen is rapidly changing, which is fascinating for the U.K. audience. The exhibits are not just about design, not just about collections. It’s about the impact of collections and designs having on the real world, on jobs, on manufacturing, on business,” said Reeve.

    Both Bouman and Reeve made insightful remarks on the fact that more time should be devoted to research before implementation for the Design Society’s sustainable growth because great museums don’t arrive overnight.