On Sept. 10, “2015 Source Self Made Design” Florence Industrial Design Exhibition was officially opened at Shanghai & Florence-Sino Italian Design Exchange Center built by DOBE.
This exhibition was curated and planned by Altrove exhibition planning company. Apart from Sino Italian Design Exchange Center, this exhibition also attracted Istituto Europeo di Design, Academy of Florence, Istituto Superiore Per Le Industrie Artistiche (Isia) Di Firenze, OMA (a culture and art promotion fund invested and set up by Florence banking and financial system), Florence Enterprise Confederation, FAB LAB, Make Tank, Officina Creativa and other Italian design platforms. As the last event of “2015 Summer in Florence” cultural festival, this industrial design exhibition also got great support from Florence municipal government and Tuscany government.
It’s reported that in this 11-day exhibition, 70 design teams, over 100 designers and 68 design masters from 14 nations (Brazil, Argentina, Denmark, Holland, etc) will promote and introduce their works and ideas in turn. Through 20 exchange meetings, these designers will spread and popularize the industry’s trend toward independent design, development and market launch among the public. Different from before, this event also added a sales part to show the close connection between design and marketing. All exhibited works (including the works exhibited in past exhibitions) will be available in the “pop-up shop” set up by the Chamber of Commerce of Florence for investors to choose and purchase.
This opening ceremony’s guest speakers included one of the most successfully commercialized Italian handicraft brands Segnoitaliano, Italian authority on architecture Renzo Piano’s outstanding disciple Fabrizio Pierandrei, Umberto Tolino, a winner of ADI Compasso d’Oro twice, and other famous designers.
Italy is world-famous for design. It has contributed lots of wonderful and excellent design works to the world. To let more outstanding works have the chance to show themselves up, some designers with business sense put forward the slogan: “Self Made Design” (Autoproduzione), which means designers should participate in the whole production and marketing process, including design, production and sales, to directly improve the “design-marketing” positive interaction. Compared with general desk work, to many designers, business is a totally strange world. Thus before this exhibition was opened, the sponsor invited Slowd design platform’s CEO Andrea Cattabriga to teach the designers how to finish market research, build mature business models, carry out regional and international cooperation.
In view of the huge Chinese market and Chinese people’s increasingly improved taste in life, the prospect for cooperation in design field between China and Italy is promising. The sponsor specially selected Sino Italian Design Exchange Center as the venue for this exhibition, hoping to convey this message and their sincere desire for cooperation through the window of the Center. Meanwhile, the trend toward self-dependent innovation in China also agrees with the theme of “Self Made Design”. We believe the cooperation and interactions between the two sides will certainly enhance the overall development of design industry in the two nations to a higher level.