The groundbreaking ceremony for the International Design School of Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen (HITSZ) was held on July 28 with officials and school leaders participating in person and through video links. Those in attendance included Xu Jianling, deputy head of the Shenzhen Education Bureau, Party Chief of HITSZ Wu Delin, HITSZ vice presidents Zhen Liang and Yao Yingxue as well as Thomas D. Meier, president of Zurich University of the Arts and school representative Peter Boelsterli who joined their Chinese counterparts through online livestreaming.

Party Chief of HITSZ Wu Delin said at the ceremony that the groundbreaking marks a new breakthrough in HITSZ’s international education cooperation and will breathe new life into the city’s endeavor to become an international hub of design.

On July 28, 2015, HITSZ, the Shenzhen Municipal Government and the Zurich University of the Arts signed an agreement to jointly build and run the design school.

Covering a area of 37,000 square meters and a construction area of 111,000 square meters, the project will include classrooms, labs, libraries and museums with a total investment of 967 million yuan (US$136.2m).

Design Science, Architecture as well as Urban & Rural Planning will be important disciplines at the design school, which plans to enroll 1,200 full-time undergraduate and graduate students.

Peng Hao, vice general manager of China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp. Ltd., said the exterior of the school buildings will have multicolored gradients, which means the exterior of buildings will display different colors as the environment changes. The school will also have shared spaces for brainstorming among students and faculty.

Upon completion, the design school will be committed to cultivating high-caliber creative talents with global vision and competitiveness and forming a multidisciplinary schooling system in which humanity, social sciences and engineering are combined and art and technology are highly integrated.

President Meier said in his video address that Shenzhen is an ideal city to have a new institute for design as it is the first city in China to be acknowledged as a “City of Design” by the UNESCO. “Design can help boost the sustainable development in Shenzhen and benefit local residents. Design research can be easily linked to the strong and creative industries in Shenzhen,” Meier added.

Speaking to the media, vice president Yao revealed that the design school is expected to be completed and put into use by the beginning of 2023 and will start recruitment in 2021. Before construction is completed, design students will share the HITSZ campus during the period of transition. Teachers from the Zurich University of the Arts will join their Chinese counterparts in teaching. “In the future the design school will focus on research and aims to become a base for the cultivation of design and creative talents in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area,” Yao said.(Yang Mei)