Michael Young Studio has been appointed by Shenzhen Industrial Design Profession Association (SIDA) as curators of this year’s Hebei International Industrial Design Week (HIDW).

Today’s model of urban and industrial development is in crisis. Megacities are extracting more resource than the environment has to offer. Consumerism prevails from West to East. The expansion of human footprint has reached a critical point and led to more frequent and more damaging natural disasters.

Established global value chain leads to systematic inequality. Trade wars are taking the headlines more often than ever and international collaborations are falling apart. The crisis has shown its true face; be it economically, socially and environmentally. But it is only when individual’s lives and global supply chain have been disrupted by global the most devastating global pandemic that we are finally forced to reflect on our current way of living and future development.

Besides the pursuit of efficiency and abundance, can urban development be better sustained through ecology, resource conservation, culture and ritual? Reflecting on the universal “consumption x production” model and considering the unavoidable reshuffle, what are the implications to existing industrial bases?

Hebei Industrial Design Week (HIDW) 2020 will look at the future urban and industrial development from a whole new perspective, exploring and looking to innovate future development models, drawings on the talents and resources in Xiong’an Hebei and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Urban Agglomeration, and construct design’s praxis of pluriversality.