From Micro to Macro

Italian Pavillion @SDW2018
April 2018 - Shenzhen, China
Institutional Project

From Micro to Macro is an exhibition made in occasion of the Shenzhen Design Week 2018, promoted by the Consulate General of Italy in Guangzhou and supported by Shenzhen City of Design Promotion Association and Città di Torino. It has been curated by Politecnico di Torino. “From the spoon to the city” was the slogan created by the Italian architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers in 1952 in the occasion of the drafting of the famous “ Athens Charter”. After many years, this statement seams to represent a valid starting point to show and describe the approach of Italian design and its intrinsic value in attending to the challenges offered by contemporary China. The theme of the Italian Pavilion, “From Micro to Macro: Italian designers in South China” would firstly highlight the strong presence of Italian practitioners in China, who operate in different fields of design. The exhibition aims to explore the possibilities offered by design practices in their transcalar vision, capable to put in correlation different issues and giving specific responses. Practitioners establish a peculiar relation with the environment they are operating in, and the ability to pass from “Micro to Macro” and vice versa demonstrates a specific attitude to put in the centre problem-solving procedures. Taking inspiration from the heterogeneous experiences of those travellers, designers place in the middle the promotion of creativity as well as expressing their ability to recombine different paths to generate methodologies supporting their design processes.