Why does Zhangjiawan Design Town attract designers to gather? Why can it become the permanent venue of Beijing International Design Week?

The 2023 Beijing International Design Week opened yesterday at the permanent venue of Zhangjiawan Design Town, located in the urban sub center of Beijing. Why can this become a new development base for the "design city" of Beijing? Why has it become the permanent venue of Beijing International Design Week?

Building a new academic highland for Chinese design

The permanent venue of Beijing International Design Week is located at No. 8 Guanghua Road, Zhangjiawan Town, Tongzhou District, Beijing. It will gradually open to the public in September 2023, with a total construction scale of approximately 17700 square meters, including 11000 square meters above ground and 6700 square meters underground. It is used as the venue for Beijing International Design Week, integrating and driving well-known brands such as Beijing Fashion Week and Beijing Architecture Biennale to hold corresponding events, and promoting the normalized operation of the permanent venue for Design Week through various cooperation methods.

The main functions of the underground first floor of the permanent site of Beijing International Design Week are the underground garage and equipment room, while the main functions of the above ground three floors are the fashion and art center, cultural and creative center, new audio-visual design center, master studio, children's green design center, Beijing International Design Week fixed exhibition hall, and outdoor Beijing International Design Week square.

The first store of Beijing Cultural and Creative Authorization Center will be permanently located.

According to Luo Xiaojun, Deputy Director of the Office of the Organizing Committee of Beijing International Design Week, the permanent venue of Beijing International Design Week will be developed into a new highland for Chinese design academia, forming an authoritative venue in the global creative design industry for the exhibition, display, promotion, education, and collection of fixed achievements in the design industry. On the basis of providing high-quality supporting services such as exhibitions, transactions, and creative offices, the permanent venue will rely on Beijing International Design Week to operate globally renowned events, build a comprehensive operation and management system for the cultural and creative industry in the international design town, promote the integration, scale aggregation, and orderly flow of global creative design element resources in the town, and make every effort to build an "international design center".

At the same time, the permanent venue will gradually be built and improved into a Chinese design museum, creating a new academic highland for Chinese design, benchmarking the development model of the Milan Design Museum in Italy, and driving the development of the design town into a well-known cultural and artistic area at home and abroad.

Zhengcheng Incubation Design Talent Cradle

During the Design Week, there is an exhibition for young design talents with a catchy name - "Nian Kan Qing Xiang", which translates to "seeing what a group of young people are thinking once a year".

This exhibition originated from the "Youth Design 100" Youth Designer Training Program jointly launched by Beijing International Design Week and the School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2019. This year marks the fifth anniversary. In the special exhibition for the fifth anniversary, we collected and sorted out the works of outstanding young designers from "Youth Design 100" from 2019 to 2023. We also added a special section on "Design for Youth in Beijing", presenting the imaginative and practical exploration of youth design with "Beijing" as the background.

The 5th Anniversary Special Exhibition of "Nian Kan Qing Xiang".

Liu Xuan, Project Director of the Urban Design and Innovation Research Institute of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Deputy Director of the "Youth Design 100" Executive Committee, introduced that in 2022, "Youth Design 100" will settle in Zhangjiawan Design Town. The project is linked by universities and collaborates with a group of important art and design schools around the world, bringing together thinkers and researchers from various fields. Through multiple methods such as mentor recommendation, expert screening, public evaluation, and market inspection, it aims to explore young designers with active thinking, advanced concepts, solid academic knowledge, and potential, and create an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem for young designers.

When it comes to Zhangjiawan Design Town, he said excitedly, "We are witnessing the rapid development here. With the construction of the urban sub center, the gradually complete urban supporting facilities, and the preferential tax policies for designers in Zhangjiawan Design Town, it provides very important support for young people's entrepreneurship. I believe that more and more designers will naturally choose to come here. After the high concentration of talents and resources, the agglomeration effect will quickly form an industrial effect."

Gathering more design agencies

The "Mirror World" themed flower exhibition with floral growth has become one of the most attractive "check-in spots" for this design week. It is not easy to create flower exhibition designs in a space that is nearly 30 meters long and about 4.5 meters wide. In the flower exhibition corridor, the area is separated by the combination of real flowers, silk flowers, and evergreen plants, making each scenery both independent and interconnected.

The design inspiration for "Mirror World" comes from the floral artist Zou Tong of this exhibition. Through the combination of floral art and mirrors, she presents a scene in the mirror that cannot be seen behind flowers and artworks. In the exhibition, a little girl's handicraft with her hand behind her seemed to have nothing to do with flowers when she looked at it from the front. It wasn't until she saw through the mirror behind her that she was holding a rose in her hand.

"When flowers encounter all things in the vast world, they evoke dialogue and communication with each other, which is their true meaning for people and the environment. We hope that through this small flower art exhibition, people can see the vitality of flowers blooming and see themselves in the mirror," said Zou Tong.

The little girl holding a rose at the "Mirror World" floral exhibition

Kou Jianqin, the curator of the "Mirror World" themed flower exhibition, participated in the preparation, organization, and implementation of the Cultural and Tourism Industry Summit and the High Quality Development Forum of Characteristic Towns last year. She has witnessed the development of Zhangjiawan Design Town step by step. "Last year, the surrounding business format was not yet perfect, and this year the second phase of the design town is already under full construction. I have seen the renovation design renderings of Master Cui Kai, and the future second phase project will have a very beautiful air corridor."

She said that this place not only improves hardware facilities, but also provides a very generous series of subsidy policies such as tax, rent, and talent. "When I think about the future, when I go out, there will be architects on the left and landscape and interior designers on the right. Every block is full of design sense, and every detail has the participation and contribution of designers. I am very excited and excited. I believe that in three years, the small town will undergo tremendous changes. I have decided to settle in the design of the small town and have recommended it to many collaborative design agencies."

Zhengcheng Design Talent Learning Site

In the digital art exhibition Butterfly Change on the second floor of the park, there are not only works of 20 Chinese artists, but also the latest works of young artists from Britain, Italy, France, Germany, Iran, Türkiye, India, Ukraine and other countries.

At the end of the exhibition, there is an AI video work called "Roundtable Conference - Forum on Technology, Art, and the Future", which is created by an 18-year-old Chinese designer named Chen Zehui. In this virtual work, Chen Zehui programmed a very surreal scene. One night indoors, a strong beam of light was projected, and five people with different identities were sitting around a round table chatting, namely Picasso, Su Shi, Wendy, Musk, and Latin. This is neither a traditional character pose photography nor a live action drama scene. It is a short film generated using AI technology, and the video production uses various latest software such as UAE VPN, Discord, Midjournal, ChatGPT, etc.

Gao Hongjun and Fang Zhuoya are freshmen majoring in visual communication design at China University of Mining and Technology. They came to Beijing from Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province to visit the Beijing International Design Week exhibition.

"We are visiting Zhangjiawan Design Town for the first time and hope that by the time we graduate, it can become a gathering place for designers," said Fang Zhuoya.

More creative exhibitions are underway

The first phase of the exhibition season at the permanent site of Beijing International Design Week will be held from September 21 to October 10, mainly divided into four major sections: open innovation, child friendliness, future impression, and artistic perception.

Outside the park, a black mobile dining car with the words "support" and "appetizer" is particularly eye-catching. This is actually a mobile station for this design week - the "Future Food Design Laboratory".

Mr. Kaiwei's mobile dining car.

"Food design is an idea, a movement, and nothing is more important than eating in the world." Chi Wei, the founder of the+86 Food Design Alliance, said, "When it comes to Tomatoes on sticks, a household name, there is no well-known brand. The food we are exhibiting this time is to make Tomatoes on sticks a standardized brand, 'Mr. Kai Wei', and use mobile space to reduce operating costs. We hope to promote this brand of Tomatoes on sticks, and also hope to use the concept and method of food design to change China's food industry."

"Yesterday there were some Tomatoes on sticks here, but today there are only other hawthorn products left. I came to the opening ceremony yesterday and just bought a bunch of two hawthorns on it, which are particularly suitable in size and much lower in sweetness than ordinary Tomatoes on sticks. I think both the taste and the packaging are very consistent with the needs of current customers." said a young designer who came to visit.

In the exhibition hall, the "Green Moving Together" International Children's Friendly Green Design Exhibition focuses on children's daily life, and revolves around children's clothing, food, housing, transportation, education, research and other enterprise products as the exhibition content. By designing interactive experiences, children can experience green design products firsthand and stimulate their interest in green design; At the Master Studio Innovation Exhibition, we gather outstanding design masters, home furnishing brands, lifestyle brands, artists, and lifestyle opinion leaders from both domestic and international sources to create inspiring living aesthetic spaces, jointly propose ideal spaces, and create inspiration for ideal living; The Wilderness Planet Outdoor Exploration International Film Festival is the world's first themed film festival focused on high-quality and sustainable human development in the AI era. The first stop event is located at the permanent site of Beijing International Design Week

Green and environmentally friendly works designed for children.

Zhu Yi, Deputy General Manager of Beijing International Design Week Co., Ltd., said, "During the design week, the vast majority of exhibition activities held in Zhangjiawan Design Town are open to the public for free without reservation. We also provide free super large parking lots and welcome citizens to come and check in and visit during the Mid Autumn Festival and National Day holidays."