A Designer Revolution

China has an appetite for design – just not its own. The market for interior furnishings is expanding, along with the country’s middle class, but new consumers have tended to favour products imported from the west.

Though the country is home to tens of thousands of design students graduating each year, few will get to show their work to a large audience. If they do gain recognition, it is almost always abroad. Design curators in Europe and the US are picking up on the younger generation’s adept translation of traditional crafts but will China ever show enough interest in its own designers to help them succeed at home?

Read the rest of the article at Financial Times

Will We Ever See Another Four Great Inventions from China?

China’s Four Great Inventions—papermaking, the compass, gunpowder, and printing—were innovations from bygone eras. When looking at China’s history over the past 50 years, it’s very difficult to find a single innovation that has made a significant impact on the world. Instead, the “Chinese version of something Western” phenomenon has characterized much of China’s recent product launches. For example, there is Taobao.com, which is essentially the Chinese version of eBay. Whether China can shed its copycat reputation and become a source of global innovation has become a constant source of debate. While the country’s economy has been growing at an astonishing rate, with an increasingly sophisticated domestic market, the country’s highly centralized government and weak intellectual property system have severely hampered China’s standing as a global innovator.

Read the full article at Design Mind

China’s Most Innovative Companies

Congratulations to Shanghai’s very own Xindanwei, recently voted one of China’s top ten most innovative companies by branding, tech and design mag, FastCompany.com as part of their annual Top 50.

The list, compiled by the online publication’s editorial team, praises the creative co-working hub for its community of freelancers and emphasis on exchange:

“Its aim is to expand the possibilities for not only where designers, programmers, and artists can work, but also how they can work together“.

All in all it makes for an interesting list, with the likes of Tencent (the brains behind the phenomenally successful WeiXin) and dating website Jiayuan.com also making an appearance.

There’s a pleasing number of green tech companies on this year’s run-down – namely Landwasher, the folks behind an environmentally friendly, water-free flush toilet designed for communities in need across the world; and Trina Solar for easy-to-install, low-cost solar paneling.

FastCompany love their lists, and in addition to the China and global low-down, they’ve also compiled top-tens by industry. Wang Shu of Hangzhou-based Amateur Architecture featured in that one – last year he picked up the Pritzker Prize and made the list for “rebelling against the westernization of modern China [and] advocating use of inexpensive materials like recycled bricks and tiles from renovated sites“.

To Style, now, where Qingdao-born Huishan Zhang features for “[redefining] the connotations of “Made in China“. He’s definitely one to watch, and just this week, Womens Wear Daily declared his London Fashion Week show “among the strongest outings so far in London this season“. More on his newest collection here.

Via CreativeHunt