In June, Design Shanghai, after a hiatus, returned to Shanghai for its 10th anniversary exhibition. Exhibiting brands showcased their creativity and sincerity, attracting designers and fans from across the country and reigniting industry dialogue.

In the highly anticipated Hall 1, international brands showcased their latest creations. Italian lighting brand Flos showcased several new products, including the Arco K floor lamp, a limited edition released in China for its 60th anniversary, interpreting the spirit of design through light. Home fashion brand Cappellini showcased products such as its "Homage to Mondrian" collection, recreating the master's classics through artistic creation. Rooted in local culture, Zhiyin and Exception used movable home storage to immerse visitors in the aesthetics of Eastern fashion.

This year's newly established Lifestyle and Accessories Design Hall was a highlight of the fair, showcasing a range of home decor, accessories, and artworks that showcase the potential for unique lifestyles and personalized spaces. In addition to the work releases, special events celebrating the tenth anniversary have begun: Design Street brings together 11 outstanding independent design studios from China and abroad; the "Disappearing Boundaries" exhibition explores the relationship between people, objects, and nature in the digital age; a "wild luxury" space presented by WAD has attracted a line of young people paying to visit; and the book "Their Decade: 2014-2023, China Design in Progress" has been released, exploring the opportunities and challenges of the design industry.

Around 2010, Chinese design brands were still navigating the path to commercialization, constantly explaining why their designs were so expensive in the face of skepticism. In just over a decade, the Chinese design industry has entered a period of rapid growth, with numerous brands emerging from this fertile land, and international brands and designers also arriving to explore the market. Together, they contribute to the diverse landscape of original Chinese design.

Privacy is a priority

The Starbucks "shared office" in Shanghai's Raffles City is a favorite among nearby office workers, offering a short escape from the hustle and bustle of the office with just a cup of coffee. For large-scale meetings, you can pay to use a shared conference room, offering both noise isolation and privacy, practically a "second meeting room" within a shopping mall.

What insights have the experience of working from home during the pandemic brought to current office trends? Privacy is likely one of them. At Design Shanghai, many visitors were drawn to the "Mofang" soundproofing booth, a phone booth-like design, and stopped to experience it. Unlike traditional soundproof booths, these quick-install rooms are compact, open, and light-permeable, with built-in lighting and ventilation systems. They can also be quickly reconfigured to accommodate various spatial requirements; for example, a double room with the same modules can be combined into a quad room.

Soundproofing booths are now appearing in major shopping malls in Shanghai's popular business districts. Initially, they primarily consisted of single rooms, similar to street phone booths, convenient for short-term use by users who needed to answer calls or take a nap. Later, they expanded to include double rooms and even multi-person meeting rooms.

Over the past decade, open-plan office spaces have proliferated, replacing cubicles as the mainstream layout. This has created an interactive and collaborative working model, but it has also posed new challenges to privacy. In large, open-plan offices, almost everyone has experienced the awkwardness of taking extended private calls. BBC data also shows that in open office environments, employee productivity can decrease by 66% due to noise interference.


"We used to have many cubicles, but later evolved to straight workstations. This requires a lot of collaboration, but with increased communication, privacy can be violated, and privacy needs to be restored," Yang Rongjie, a product designer at BFM, told Yicai Global. In 2010, Finnish office brand Framery pioneered the silent cubicle, providing solutions to noise and privacy issues for well-known companies like Microsoft. This new type of cubicle subsequently became popular among tech companies in Silicon Valley.

Yang Rongjie remembers visiting the Cologne Furniture Fair around 2018 and seeing many booths equipped with silent cubicles, allowing exhibitors and clients to communicate more quietly. Beyond business offices, these cubicles can also be used in medical and outdoor settings, and users like livestreamers and instrument players can also install them at home. Currently, domestic and international companies in the silent cubicle market include Framery, Sound Doctor, UVO, Steelcase, and Lamex. "There are about 20 to 30 companies in China, most of which are factory-based." In Yang Rongjie's view, the open-plan spaces popular in the West aren't necessarily entirely suitable for Chinese office environments. "Does the rigid, rigid layouts of internet giants also require alternative scenarios to accommodate diverse needs? Just as Chinese people prefer semi-enclosed sofas and screens, the demand for silent workstations also indirectly reflects the diversification of office trends."


In the home, prioritizing both privacy and openness is equally important. At Design Shanghai, renowned designer Lu Zhirong presented his spatial installation, "Interlude," created in late 2019 and early 2020. Layered screens enclose a space of alternating virtual and real spaces. Engraved on the screens are a matrix of light-diffusing niches, which changes with the music and lighting, like a time-based device, gradually instilling a sense of inner peace and release.

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