The First World Design Cities Conference (WDCC) hosted by Shanghai Municipal People's Government opened today (Sep. 15).
Gong Zheng, the mayor of Shanghai lit up the starting device. Xu Xiaolan, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China, Wu Qing, executive vice mayor of Shanghai, and Qu Xing, deputy director-general of UNESCO delivered speeches. Zhang Wei, the vice mayor of Shanghai attended the ceremony.
Various activities will be organized to show the trend of cross-border integration, innovation-driven effect and ubiquitous empowerment of design, and the vision of Shanghai to integrate into global creative cities network, pooling wisdom, building platforms, sharing opportunities so as to create a better future with all creative cities.
On the opening ceremony, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, France's former prime minister, Philippe Starck, French design master, Jean Nouvel, the Pritzker Architecture Prize winner in 2008 and Ye Hongmu (Nicolas Hieronimus), CEO of L’ORÉAL offered their advice for Shanghai's development as the City of Design. A batch of creative design industrial programs and international cooperation projects were released including Shanghai International Design Think Tank, Donghua University-WWF Sustainable Fashion Center, China's Time-honored Design Innovation Platform, Open Resources Interaction Platform for Design Industry of the Bank of China, PARSONS China Design Innovation Center, Xiaohongshu Digital Design Innovation Platform and Sifang Puli Global Transportation Design Center etc.. The first Frontier Design Innovation Award was unveiled on the ceremony. And Huangpu District was honored as Shanghai Design Capital Construction Demonstration Area.
The first WDCC themed by Vision in Perspective is held in and around the Ship Pavilion along the Huangpu River, consisting of the opening ceremony, 2 summit forums including the Design 100 Summit and Design City Summit, 2 exhibitions and more than 50 summit forums and design activities. The main exhibition centers around the five dimensions of the Innovative Design City, namely, empowering innovative development through design, creating vibrant urban spaces, optimizing social public services, delivering a better life for people, and pooling efforts to build urban brands, with special areas for France and Italy. The total area of the exhibition exceeds 6000 square meters, with a total of over 150 brands on display and over 800 exhibit series, of which international brands account for 20%.
Yang Jincheng, general manager of China State Shipbuilding and Fang Shou'en, Secretary of the Party Committee of Tongji University attended the opening ceremony. The WDCC aims at creating a first-class international conference for cooperation and exchange in design. During the four days of the convention, various activities will be organized to show the trend of cross-border integration, innovation-driven effect and ubiquitous empowerment of design, and the vision of Shanghai to integrate into global creative cities network, pooling wisdom, building platforms, sharing opportunities so as to create a better future with all creative cities.