SHINE | 11-Jul-2020 | By Li Xinran
The Suzhou International Design Week has it all: sculptures, paintings, posters, installations, furniture, books, garments, fashion items, catwalk models, a flea market, designers, artists and even fresh vegetables.
The five-day event ends tonight at Taohuawu (or Peach Blossom Village) in Gusu District. The first design week in Suzhou — a 2,500-year-old city famous for its extremely rich culture and exquisite handicrafts — creates a new vision for the city’s future and presents new ideas and the latest achievements in urban renaissance, industrial upgrading, people’s livelihood improvement and cultural inheritance.
The theme “Grand Design, New Economy” underscores Suzhou’s plans to become a “City of Design” and a “Capital of Manufacturing” by using its rich cultural heritage as an key resource, said Xu Gang, director of Gusu District.
Xu is also director of the Management Committee of the Suzhou National Historic and Cultural City Preservation Areas. Like “X-Port Venice” project, Suzhou aims to showcase “the excellent cultural heritage is the origin of its innovation.”
The project curated by Michele Brunello focuses on “traditional modernization and commercial development.” It studies and analyses how Venice’s glass, fashion and household industries have created an inheritance and fostered innovation through the combination of education, culture, tourism and other industries.
And it seeks a way to integrate the visions of Venice and Suzhou to build a dream world interwoven with reality and imagination, elements and symbols and fables.
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