Atelier: Beijing Design Week's Yanling Duan
Witness history in the making at the first annual Beijing Design Week (Sep 26-Oct 3). We met up with executive director Yanling Duan – who once served as editor-in-chief of Case da Abitare China, documented Milan Design Week (among others) and hosted Creative Life, China’s first design-travel TV program – to discuss why she thinks our humble city is finally ready.
Tell us something about BJDW that we wouldn’t be able to find on your website.
The secret program of our opening ceremony – and I’m not going to spill the whole story here either. All I can say is that we are collaborating with one of China's best 3D visual effect developers, Crystal CG, and have invited architect Wang Hui to transform the China Millennium Monument into an "open design book" for the special occasion.
What is Beijing’s prior involvement with Design Week?
Every industry has its own Olympics. The ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic Design Assocations) World Congress is a major event for the graphic design world, and Beijing was lucky enough to be chosen as its host city in 2009. This gave CAFA (Central Academy of Fine Arts), Beijing Industry Design Center and Gehua Cultural Development Group strong incentive to get together and organize a pilot program of BJDW during that period. Their efforts were much appreciated by the Chinese design community, but made comparatively little impact on the general public.
BJDW 2011 is organized by Gehua Rizzoli Design Develompent Group, a newly-established company that operates with the long-term goal of advocating design, with more focus on design education and public participation. We are fully aware that one of our major challenges is to correct the misconception that design is simply a matter of prettifying items, and will collaborate with various media to get our message across and generate more partner support for design education.
How long established are other Design Weeks and what will Beijing have to do to catch up?
The most established Milan Design Week celebrated its 50th anniversary this April, but more than 60 cities around the world are hosting these days, including Berlin, Seoul, San Paolo and Copenhagen. BJDW has a long way to go in comparison to its counterparts. It has to start from the market, but also a step ahead of the market.
Why is Beijing ready this year?
Beijing is never short of talent, but rather a lack of facilitators who help and support systematically. People have been hungry for all things new and foreign for decades. Now you can sense the desire for a new Chinese aesthetic to emerge.
What would make BJDW 2011 a success?
The quality of living improved by design cannot be forged by the design elite alone, but requires a social wave of recognition for design in a broader audience. For that to happen, government support is a must. When a project in this scale is initiated by the government, we know we have a good start.
Define “design.”
Design is intelligence expressed in form, out of a sincere intention for serving the public.
In your opinion, what is the most creative thing about Beijing?
Cultural curiosity defines Beijing. That’s always the best starting point for creativity.
To get involved:
1. Tune into BTV on Sep 26 at 7pm for a live broadcast of the opening ceremony.
2. Pick up a BJDW Guide that will be distributed around the city for the full program of hundreds of design events and exhibitions. Most of them are free to the public.
3. Visit www.bjdw.org for more details.
Look out for our more comprehensive guide on BJDW, to be posted later this week.
Photo: Zhang Zhongfeng
