The collaboration between Design Shanghai and Xintiandi continues in 2019. This will be the third collaboration between the Chinese trade show, which aims to bring together and promote the world’s best designer brands in Asia, and one of the most luxurious areas in the city, which hosts one of the most attractive events of Chinese Design Week. From 4 to 17 March @Xintiandi Design Festival will encourage visitors to meet and get to know each other the way people did in the past, through social ‘contact’.
Tan zhuo, director of Design Shanghai, explains: “@Xintiandi Design Festival is one of the best social practice platform that allows designers to freely express themselves. Each year we select the most talented architects, designers, and artists from the design sector who wish to challenge themselves by testing out and realising their ideas through public art installations.”
The exhibition, enhanced by events, forums, and seminars, is constantly growing: the second edition had 18 installations, while this year there will be 25. @Xintiandi has an evident international footprint, but welcomes mostly Chinese designers in an effort to introduce the world to the country’s style and culture. The exhibition is conceived as an itinerary through which visitors interact with projects like Cloud-Mountain Atlas by Zhuang Ziyu, where people lose themselves in a labyrinth walking shoulder to shoulder with one another.
The concept of meeting and getting to know each other is even stronger in the Hide and Seek installation by Jae Li, co-founder and creative director of LabLimitless: here participants must constantly engage in the processes of acquaintance and dialogue. Among the most interesting projects, The Whispering Tree by Kokaistudios stands out, an installation inspired by a children’s game. Hanging from transparent pipes, like the branches of a willow tree, the installation attracts visitors and encourages them to confide in one another.
