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27/9/2012

Beijing Design Week 2012

Caochangdi Village, Beijing

Chief Curator: Beatrice LEANZA

Founding Partner: Naihan LI

The Community is the newest and most awaited addition to the ever-growing citywide events of Beijing Design Week. Debuting in 2012 on September 28, and based in the urban village of Caochangdi (CCD), CCD - The Community is a creative incubator playing host to a research-driven program that aims to re-think synergies across art, design and technology whilst uniting and providing a platform to existing but scattered creative communities across Beijing and Greater China. Organized by the curatorial lab BAO Atelier with production partner RAWR! Labs, CCD – The Community is a proponent of a series of networked explorations that analyze the entanglements of the ‘collaborative nexus’ in contemporary creative practice as well as the transformative spirit it harbors. Tucked away on the outer edge of the 5th ring road, Caochangdi itself is one-of-a-kind among the 300 so-called “villages in the city” that epitomize Beijing’s spontaneous reforms of 21st century urbanism. It has become a space of convergence that has grown organically around the life of its inhabitants: here life goers, migrant workers, farmers, entrepreneurs and taxi drivers sit with designers, artists, collectors and dealers. The area is quickly becoming known as the alter ego of 798 Art District, hosting a self-motivated group of contemporary galleries, artists’ studios and independent creative and educational ventures in art, design and architecture.

This newly-gentrified environment also houses local factory buildings, village mansions, hastily-built accommodation for migrant communities, lean-to shelters and transient food carts, offering a rare glimpse into Beijing’s bi-polar urban reality with those from the center of society engaging with those from outside it. CCD – The Community is established as a long-term curatorial endeavor dedicated to nurturing this distinctive environment.

CCD – The Community @ Beijing Design Week 2012 will fall under two main domains:

1. CCD - The Strip, which entails exhibitions showcasing design inspired by or made to inspire China, including a portion of the Milan Guest City program. This aspect of the program will occupy spaces unique to Caochangdi, bringing together CCD’s creative community under one umbrella for the first time.

2. CCD – The Pavilion, an original design and special invitational project. This temporary structure is proposed as a yearly commission to an internationally renowned architect, designer or artist. It will act as a light-weight architectural installation and as the venue for CCD’s various live events, talks, lectures and discursive sessions; a common space for informal, open-ended exchange between the creative community and the general public.

CCD – The Community 2012 thematic framework includes an interconnected series of projects delving into the unexplored territory between online and offline realities and communities. The prescriptive boundaries defining the virtual as reality’s ‘other’ are no longer in place as we split and merge onto multiple platforms, mapping ourselves no longer in or out, on or off, but always and simultaneously embodying both. China-based designers, artists, industry experts and academics shall offer their visions on urbanism, architecture, digital innovation, traditional crafts and new technologies, smart materials, service and information design, and much more.

Main Organizer:
BAO Atelier
www.thebao.com
BAO is a curatorial, design and editorial office founded in Beijing in 2006 by Beatrice LEANZA (curator) and Naihan LI (designer/architect). Acting by way of an international network of institutional and private partners, and collaborators, BAO’s projects foster new encounters and transversal research among the visual arts, design and architecture with a particular explorative focus on contemporary Asia. BAO is a unique China-based think tank for interdisciplinary investigation, both theoretical and practice-based, of alternative and critical formats of communication and spatial occupation in the urban territory.

Production Partner:
RAWR! Labs
www.rawr-labs.com
RAWR! is a cross-disciplinary, collaborative research and development lab based in Caochangdi, China. We focus on rapid-prototyping and medium-term incubation for design, creative and technology companies, providing them with the technical resources and support network necessary to grow their businesses and expedite their development of innovative products.

Institutional Partners:
CAFA Media Lab, Parsons The New School of Design (NY), Marangoni Institute of Fashion (IT), Crystal Education (LCD – Lab for Computational Design), Politecnico di Milano (IT).

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Milan Guest City Program

Under the theme, “Milano BEYOND Design”, the Milan Guest City program for Beijing Design Week 2012 aims to unveil the lesser known stories of today’s plural, pervasive and innovation-driven experiences in contemporary design that expand and surpass Milan’s iconic yet seemingly impossible dissociation from a bygone history of industrial heritage and heroic singularities. Moving beyond the so called 4F’s of Italian Design (food, fashion, furniture and Ferrari), this year’s program features both the individuals and the objects that trace the path of tradition presented in extensive exhibitions across BJDW main hubs and a selection of projects that value and envision common solutions, and involve platforms for sharing, collaborating and self-producing. CCD – The Community is where these projects meet and merge with similar realities, sporting new visions and sustainable forms of transferring knowledge and production. Illustrated through six keywords, the ultimate message of the 2012 Guest City program is one where Milano “thinks, feels, shares, respects, engages, makes through design” for a creative environment that nurtures and improves everyday life.

Presented under CCD - The Strip, and part of CCD - Select, Milano @ CCD comprises of invitational and commissioned projects: events and special collaborations with local and international players responding to the unique context of Caochangdi and its 2012 thematic frameworks:
The Real Network, an interactive ‘offline’ public design festival developed by design collective Esterni in collaboration with and produced by CCD – The Community. Interni Legacy by design and interiors magazine, Interni, which features large scale outdoor installations by Alessandro & Francesco Mendini, and architect Zhang Ke. Interactive Urban Furniture, an installation of custom-made pieces ‘with a social character’ by Studio dotdotdot (who are also organizing a 2-day workshop developed with CAFA students as part of Interactive Beijing conference by CAFA Media Lab). A lecture and workshop organized by Centro Marangoni, part of CCD – TalkSHOP and scheduled for October 2.

INFO
The Real Network
Esterni
www.esterni.org
The Real Network is a village-wide social experiment that “explodes and multiplies the potential of social networks in an offline dimension”. Borrowing actions from social networks such as Facebook, Google Maps and Weibo, participants can become part of a new, real and not virtual community to create unexpected links and exchanges among ordinary people living and working in Caochangdi Village, as well as visitors of Beijing Design Week 2012. Present throughout designated spots around CCD – The Community, The Real Network will encourage visitors to express what’s on their mind through wearable, customized stickers, upload videos to be broadcasted on customized mobile stations set up throughout the neighborhood, geo- reference themselves via balloons, and gain an overview of local events via a public wall, which aims to communicate information not only through text, but also photos and other forms of media, comments, “Likes” and status updates. The aim of The Real Network is to focus on the possibilities of creating links and social encounters in everyday life, and generate a non-digital world that will bring people back from the virtual to the physical in order to stimulate a genuine desire to know others and create ‘real’ relations. Esterni will also organize a concluding event on October 5 in order to gather The Real Network participants in a special setting and unique moment of ‘gifting’. Stay tuned for indication of place and time on www.caochangdi.org and www.esterni.it.

Interni Legacy
Interni
www.internimagazine.it
Interni, the Magazine of Interiors and Contemporary Design in partnership with China Industrial Design Association (CIDA), presents 2 installations designed by Alessandro and Francesco Mendini, and Zhang Ke of standardarchitecture. Originally created on the occasion of Interni Legacy, the installations will represent the possible legacies of contemporary design in a spectacular composition of experimental architectural installations.

CCD – The Community @ BJDW 2012
BAO Atelier HK Ltd. Unit A1 Hong Yi Hao Yuan, Caochangdi Village Surface
By Alessandro and Francesco Mendini, with Elegant Living www.elegantliving.cn “Nine vertical surfaces rise upward, like theatrical wings. Their contour is undulated and express an idea of ascent - a dynamic hypothesis. Each with its own colours and ornaments, they are all made with precise high-tech building materials whilst transfer-print wooden flooring is produced by Elegant Living, a Chinese company that carefully considers production processes from the forest until the finished product”.

Village Mountains
By Zhang Ke of standardarchitecture, with Camerich www.camerich.com “Ultrathin steel panels are welded to obtain a self-supporting honeycomb structure, painted white. The inner facade of the tower is clad in opaque white plexiglas to allow backlighting. The piece suggests a solid volume, where the white colour brings out the sensation of abstraction of the surrounding environment. At night, the backlighting from the inner nucleus reverses the perception, transforming the towers into enormous lights”.

Interactive Urban Furniture
Studio dotdotdot
www.dotdotdot.it
Architecture and design studio, dotdotdot, present a project that responds to the city, the neighborhood and its public spaces based on the relationship between two different cultures. Central focuses of this experiment include public spaces in Caochangdi Village, and its fluid and diverse spaces of socialization. Interactive Urban Furniture is a pretest to preserve the time and emotion that lie in the sociality of sharing. The project is structured in two parts: a family of urban furniture pieces inspired by Chinese popular street games that trigger moments of interaction, including Social Bench, Moving Ping Pong and Light Jianzi, and a two-day workshop, organized for the Interactive Beijing conference as part of CAFA Media Lab’s mentorship program. The best projects from this workshop will be displayed as part of CCD – The Community @ Beijing Design Week 2012.

Centro Maragoni
www.centromarangoni.com.cn
Hi-tech, innovation and experimentation: the future of fashion technologies within the apparel and textile industry (October 2, 3-5pm).
Set inside the grand spaces of the Italian Pavilion at Shanghai Expo, historical Milan-born Marangoni Institute of Fashion celebrates its long-lasting relationship with China by opening campus in September 2012. Centro Marangoni, Shanghai brings to China its unique training methodologies lead by professors as established practitioners. Professionals, students and designers are offered an opportunity to partake in a 2-hour workshop led by Professor Stefano Sorci around the history and future of fashion technologies in the textile and apparel industry, along with round tables and talks organized in collaboration with CCD – The Community.

CONTACT
For detailed information on schedules and individual projects please check: www.caochangdi.org (from Sept 1 onwards). Otherwise, contact Zara Arshad via zara@caochangdi.org.
Caochangdi Village
Red Building Complex No.1 (Hong Yi Hao Yuan) - A2 Chaoyang district - Beijing

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