World Design Cities Conferences at Paris Design Week

On September 15, Paris Design Week and Shanghai Design Week inaugurated the World Design Cities Conference at the Galerie Joseph Saint-Merri. The opening of the exhibition, accompanied by round tables, was a symbolic event that illustrated the collaboration between Paris Design Week and the city of Shanghai, which signed a long-term agreement with Shanghai Design Week last February. This very rich, long-term partnership puts design at the heart of cooperation.

Urban Renewal

The exhibition presented from September 15 to 18 was substantial: it covered all three floors of the gallery. It opened on urbanism, with an immersive sequence on the upheavals of Shanghai’s urban landscape, entitled “The Invisible Bund” designed by Tseng Wei-Hao and Huang Pei, and presented works by two artists, Lin Shan and Cotton Zhou. The videos show the evolution of this emblematic district, which faces the Museum of Art Pudong signed by Jean Nouvel. His gesture is a reminder of how much the greatest Chinese and foreign architects have transformed the architecture of the megalopolis. En miroir, au dernier étage de la galerie, la transformation du paysage urbain français était abordée par l’historien d’art Marc Partouche qui aborde l’ensemble urbain Paris-Saclay à travers le regard de plusieurs artistes notamment Miguel Chevalier, Céline Clanet, Bernard Moninot et Arno Gisinger.

Fashion and design

Joining the theme “design without borders”, the exhibition obviously addressed product design. It particularly valued creative and innovative companies in the fields of fashion and design. On découvrait par exemple des marques de mode haut de gamme comme ICICLE. It is also an opportunity for the public to test the new carbon fiber chair collections designed by Jiang Qiong’er, the artistic advisor of the exhibition and co-founder of the luxury brand ShangXia. On this occasion, the designer presented “Essensualism”, a sublime book that looks back on the first 13 years of this adventure with Shang Xia, and the highlighting of traditional know-how in highly contemporary collections.

Maison & Objet Design Award China

Parallèlement à la découverte d’entreprises artisanales dans le domaine de l’objet, la mode, l’art de vivre au sens large, l’exposition donnait aussi un coup de projecteurs aux jeunes talents : une belle visibilité est ainsi donnée aux designers émergeants de la section « DesignPlus » de Shanghai Design Week, ainsi qu’aux lauréats de la deuxième édition du prix Maison & Objet Design Award China. This prize is awarded to Chinese designers by a Sino-Western jury, which included personalities such as Pierre Favresse, Rossana Orlandi or Isabelle Stanislas.

Design Care and NFT

Cette journée d’inauguration est aussi l’occasion d’échanges, de mise en réseaux de professionnels. Trois tables rondes se sont succédé : la première, consacrée à l’enjeu de porter le design sous l’angle du “care” à notre ère numérique, la deuxième sur le développement d’acteurs majeurs du design dans le secteur du luxe à Shanghai, la troisième sur les NFT et le métaverse. Des thèmes en écho au “méta-sensible”, fil conducteur de ces éditions de Maison & Objet et de Paris Design Week.

The festivities and exchanges continued in the evening with a “networking party”: a promising first day of World Design Cities Conferences, thanks to its dynamism and the quality of the topics discussed.

Nathalie Degardin