Chinese designer Zhang Lei has placed 40 colored vintage doors at the MixC Shenzhen Bay shopping center, to create a dialogue between the old and the contemporary.
Doors exhibited at MixC Shenzhen Bay. Photos from MixC Shenzhen Bay’s Weibo account
Zhang is a founder of PINWU Design studio in Hangzhou, a place where traditional craft practices are still kept alive. In 2009, while studying at the Domus Academy in Milan, he found himself gaining an increasing interest in China’s traditional crafts. There, he met fellow designers Christoph John from Germany and Jovana Bogdanovic from Serbia. Finding that they all shared a similar interest in traditional craft making, they decided to work together in Zhang’s PINWU Design Studio.
Zhang has led the PINWU design team to obtain more than 20 international design awards and their design works have been shown around the world, including events such as Milan Design Week. As a designer, he focuses on deconstructing Chinese traditional crafts and then fusing them with contemporary design. PINWU’s Piao Paper Chair won the 2011 Best of the Best Red Dot Award, and its Tie Chair was nominated by the London Design Museum for the 2013 Design of the Year Award.
A concert was held on the area of “50 Doors.”
Since 2010, PINWU designers have been working on a project titled “From Yuhang,” a series of contemporary furniture and objects made with traditional techniques and materials such as bamboo, porcelain, water silk floss and paper. The collection has been presented at Milan Design Week three times from 2011 to 2013.
Dates: Until mid-October
Venue: MixC Shenzhen Bay, Nanshan District (南山区深圳湾万象城)
Metro: Line 2 or 11 to Houhai Station (后海站), Exit G