Industrial Design Forum: Sustainability in Industrial Design

Italian Design

Italy is a country with a strong design heritage that has been passed down through generations. Italy has produced some of the finest design groups and companies worldwide.

With the establishment of the first Monza Biennale in 1930 and the Milan Triennale in 1933, Italian industrial design was born.

The Italian design has left deep marks on how the concept and form of everyday objects are conceived in contemporary industrial society. Through a long process of industrial innovation and the use of new technologies, the "Italian way" has succeeded through time and has developed into a culture of beauty, combining the rich tradition of craftsmanship together with the aspiration of a better modernity, without leaving out a lively appetite for experimentation mixed with irony.

Many are the Italian companies that have marked history with their products and works, like The Vespa (1946), The 500 by Fiat (1957), Arco by Flos (1962), Blow by Zanotta (1967), Eclisse by Artemide (1967), Carlton by Sottsass for Memphis (1981), the Jucy Salif by Philippe Starck for Alessi (1990), to mention only a few.

Shenzhen: The South China Design Hub



Shenzhen and some Italian cities such as Bologna, Turin and Fabriano are all members of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. The Shenzhen Design Week and Milan Design Week are both members of the World Design Weeks (WDW).

In the development over the past 4 decades, Shenzhen design has been an indispensable part of Chinese design. Today, the number of industrial designers in Shenzhen exceeds 150,000, distributed in more than 1,400 industrial design professional companies, including more than 700 high-tech enterprises. In 2020, the total output value of industrial design in Shenzhen achieved 13,456 billion RMB, driving the economic value of downstream industries to more than 100 billion RMB.