Beijing Design Week 2018

Jointly hosted by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Beijing Municipal Government, and organized by Beijing Gehua Cultural Development Group and Beijing Industrial Design Center, Beijing Design Week is an annual city-wide cultural event held in more than 40 venues across Beijing from September 22 to October 7 in 2018. With a theme of “Homage to Life” (“致敬生活” in Chinese), this year’s event pays attention to the role of design in meeting the up-to-date needs of citizens for a better life.

Each year, Beijing Design Week invites one guest city to share their culture, design, lifestyle as well as sustainable urban development projects. Copenhagen, as this year’s guest city, will bring a series of events including exhibitions, workshops and interactive activities, under the theme of “Living is Giving”. The main exhibition is a microcosm of Copenhagen with a complete urban design – streets, houses, squares, and parks, in which visitors can immerse themselves into a full-Copenhagen city experience. In addition, a urban renewal project of Qinglong Hutong (“青龙文化创新街区” in Chinese), as an exemplar of sustainable urban development based on Danish ideas and solutions, will be jointly initiated between Copenhagen and Beijing.  

In addition to the “Guest City Program”, the Beijing Design Week has nine major sections with different focuses. The “Design Hop”, for example, is a kaleidoscope of small-scale events and exhibitions across the city which involves many historic hutong neighbourhoods and their recent urban revitalization programs. For example, the Xicheng District showcases several hutong renewal projects including “Baitasi Remade” “Dashilar Platform”, “Encountering Shichahai”, and “Fayuansi Project”, etc.

Author: Liu Ying