Steven Smit, Director of MVRDV Asia will be speaking at Forum Design in Shanghai, China

Design Shanghai is Asia’s leading international design event, breaking new ground and setting a precedent in Asia’s ever-growing design community. Showcasing the best design brands and galleries from across the globe, Design Shanghai provides a unique and exciting platform to network, exchange and establish long-term business relations with Asia’s top architects, interior designers, property developers, retailers, collectors and private buyers. Design Shanghai aims to explore how eastern and western design philosophies can work together synergistically across the six design sections: Contemporary, Classic & Luxury, Collectibles, Kitchen & Bathroom, Workplace and New Materials & Applications. The event also features bespoke installations, an inspirational design forum and exciting networking events.

‘Design Completes the Circle’, Circularity - the fundamental theme of the Design Shanghai Forum 2020, itself postponed because of coronavirus but more positive than ever about design’s ability to shape our new future. Given that earth’s resources are finite, the only way we can achieve radical change is to move value and values from a line to a circle.

As Chinese and Western design mature and form ever-stronger cultural, commercial and technological links to each other and to the future, and in the face of an unprecedented global health crisis, it is time to radically re-think value and values; what really matters to us, and how we really want to live and work. But such a vision is no use if we don’t survive. Designers’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic are already showing that the human – and humane – aspects of design thinking will be of premium value as we build a new future.

The lecture from Steven Smit will start at 11.15PM on November 29 (China time) at Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Center

Find out the full programme here