Generously backed by the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, and Ministry of Culture since its first edition in 2009, Beijing Design Week (BJDW) has grown into a firm fixture on the city’s cultural calendar. More than just a trade show or product marketing platform, BJDW is, in the words of its Italian-born creative director Beatrice Leanza, “a living ecosystem of productive relations among various local and international stakeholders, from government planners to public and private organizations as well as individual entrepreneurs and citizens.”Leanza is quick to affirm that BJDW is no product-driven Salone del Mobile, but rather an “authentic and responsive socio-centric system” that takes a more holistic approach to improving design sensibilities in a country where the biggest challenges are often socio-economic, related to housing ecosystems and changing urban demographics.Equally, though, the event promises plenty of hints as to the future shape of the design market: it seeks to be “a testing ground for addressing urban demographics often unaccounted for by planners — the “post 1980s and 90s generation,” whose lifestyles and consumption habits are less predictable, and more discerning and self-directed.”Design Hop, one of BJDW’s most innovative sections, invites participants to immerse themselves in different local communities. Two new core areas this year are Parkview Green, a premium mixed-use luxury commercial and office complex crowned by a boutique art-themed hotel developed by the Hong Kong Parkview Group that became the first building in China to achieve Platinum certification by the LEED green building rating system, and Baitasi, a historic low-rise enclave with a literary culture and religious architecture, once home to the modern scribe Lu Xun, whose museum sits within these alleys.Among the low-rise lanes of Baitasi, for instance, visitors can expect to find a temporary school built up the AA School in London that showcases several ongoing research projects that investigate the urban conditions unique to the area, a Slo-Mo Food and Craft Market designed by BaO Architects, and a series of virtual projects based on the “City as Museum” app conceptualized by Moujiti Studio that reassesses the concept of a museum in relation to the historical heritage of Beijing.BLOUIN ARTINFO caught up with Leanza to discuss the challenges and unique rewards of organizing an ambitious design-focused event on this scale, collaborating with both state-funded organizations and private corporations.BJDW is adding two new core areas this year to its Design Hop section, Parkview Green and Baitasi — one is a sleek commercial complex that houses fashion brands, premium dining options, corporate offices, and Hotel Eclat with its impressive art collection, while the other is a heritage district with traditional hutong architecture and historical monuments. What are the distinctive traits of these two areas, especially with regard to other similar hutong districts (Dashilar, for instance), or commercial areas (Taikoo Li Sanlitun) in Beijing?Design Hop remains one the most distinctive traits of BJDW in terms of how it makes design available as a process of communication among different communities, playing out like a navigational tool for tracking the beat of the urban habitat. I would say that it offers thematic explorations into the spatial and socio-cultural life of the city by celebrating design as a collective performance of an adaptive and dispositional nature. More and more these conversations are transforming into an interconnected, polyphonic dialogue. Baitasi is an historic low-rise district of mostly residential housing set between Financial Street and the commercial and shopping areas of Xidan and Fuchenmen. Unlike Dashilar, which is home to resilient communities and a recent tourist industry fed by a more pronounced commercial ecology, Baitasi is a unique enclave imbued with traditional and modern literati culture and religious architecture. It was once home to Lu Xun, whose museum sits within its alleys.In collaboration with the local developer and an interdisciplinary group of professionals and companies, the Baitasi regeneration project incubates the possibility of a holistic lifestyle from seemingly bygone times, rooting its way through the future lifescape of young culture prosumers and millennials for generations to come. Here, we will be looking into the technological and cultural implications of future living environments, focusing on how contemporary creative entrepreneurship, aided by new production methods and motivated by a collaborative spirit of making, can assuage the current social and structural disconnection of the area, while taking inspiration from it to serve more efficient, sustainable, and desirable living standards. In a sense, Baitasi will serve a testing ground for addressing urban demographics often unaccounted for by planners — specifically, the post 80s and 90s generations whose lifestyles and consumption habits are less predictable, and if anything more discerning and self-directed.Similarly we are teaming up with Parkview Green with the common goal of offering new audiences and their existing customers more insightful and thought-provoking forms of engagement with the processes of design that lie behind many of the services and products they buy everyday, from fashion to food.Given that BJDW is a high-profile government backed initiative, with support from the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, and Ministry of Culture, how do you think BJDW has helped to nurture a discerning Chinese audience for international design, as well as a market for Chinese-made design abroad?Through an ongoing, contextualized dialogue between iconic areas of Beijing and creative initiatives that envision new meanings for the public role of design, BJDW has grown into a living ecosystem of productive relations among various local and international stakeholders, from government planners to public and private organizations, as well as individual entrepreneurs and citizens. The public background of BJDW has made it possible for its actions to remain independent from solely market-driven forces. Instead, the event enables the empowerment of a more authentic and responsive system that addresses the contextual challenges of developing specific tools, products, skill sets and research environments that meet the needs of contemporary China.From the future of housing and smart ecosystems, urban acupuncture and ‘craft architecture,’ to the impact of emerging tech on fast changing urban demographics and lifestyles, Design Hop is an incubator that explores the widening economic and cultural implications of what ‘designing for China’ means today, and tomorrow.Traditionally, Design Week events have been commended by the logic of sales pitches, particularly within a Western context founded on long-lasting histories of industrial heritage. For less mature yet dynamic economic and social contexts like the Chinese one, a productive engagement with design into expanded fields of contemporary relevance beyond the promotional jargon of product launches and marketing-led operations is making a strong contribution to the evolution of a unique design culture.From day one, BJDW invested in forging just such an environment, where both local and foreign creative entrepreneurs could take up their own challenges based on the true needs of the city and its transforming demographics, rather than solely functioning as a resonating board for finished goods.For us, this means supplying good design as both process and product, and influencing the market by shaping people’s awareness of meaningful choices as both producers and consumers.Beijing Design Week runs September 23 through October 7, 2015.Follow @ARTINFOHongKong
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