Focusing on the aesthetics of lifestyle, Maison Shanghai in 2017 carries general theme of “有mo有young”, occupying entire 4 halls in Shanghai World Expo Exhibition & Convention Centre, to be held from September 12th to September15th.

With extending the concept of “Maison” (French for “home”) this year, Maison Shanghai will bring three themed sectors “Maison Essential”, “Maison Blocks” & “Design China” under the big theme, emphasis respectively on the “Aesthetics of Home”, “Aesthetics of City” and “Trends of Aesthetics”. Such sectors imply the gradual upgrading from "home" to "city", and then to "country", allowing visitors to find the value of lifestyle aesthetics in every hall. Modern home products, fantastic space transformations, magical futuristic home technology and interactions between hundreds of design magicians and visitors will jointly make the exhibition a modern and fantastic feast of home lifestyle design.

1)Maison Essential: Aesthetics of Home

Maison Essential in Hall 1 and Hall 2 will deliver the “Aesthetics of Home”, optimizing this year’s home furnishings which moved from Furniture China and covering lifestyle design brands, home decorations, handicrafts, decorative paintings, carpets, floriculture and fragrance, home textiles, tableware, lighting and other categories to meet customers’ demands for a one-stop sourcing for soft decorations.

With a total area of about 20,000 square meters, Maison Essential will house over 300 domestic and overseas exhibitors from the home furnishing industry. In this area, the organizers have set up three forum zones, namely, "Maison Business School" in Hall 1, "Maison Shanghai - JIYOUJIA Freestyle Market" and the "Modern Lightning League" in Hall 2, and will cooperate with partners such as China-Designer, Wow Design and WGSN to hold several sharing events on commercial and practices in soft decoration and lighting design, etc.

2)Maison Blocks: Aesthetics of City

Many homes together make up a city. Maison Blocks in Hall 3 is the upgraded version of Design of Designers (abbr. DOD, previously presented in SNIEC), attracting over 200 exhibitors and more than 300 designers participating this year. Past exhibitors such as InYard, 12 Hours, Bela Design, and Bentu Design as well as first-time exhibitors like HAOLI, moi minjia and Poa will all be showing their products. It is particularly worth mentioning that this year the organizers will cooperate with ELLEDECORATION and NetEase Design to launch the "Young by DOD" support plan for uncovering new design prospects, in order to promote the design power of the industry.

Conveying theme of “aesthetics of city”, the organizers have introduced the concept of “block” to break up the traditional layout of a large exhibition and allow the characteristic shops of DOD designers to be interspersed within cafes, flower shops, book bars, supermarkets and art galleries, turning the whole exhibition area into stylish blocks filled with fashionable, lively and artistic atmosphere. In addition, wonderful activities including classes in handicrafts, folk house meeting, "One Unique Skill of One Family", new lifestyle launches, band performances and forum speeches will be held in the three active zones, "2017 HaoHaoZhu DOD Design Forum", "The Handicraft Year of China" and "Centre Stage".

The “Shanghai Home Design Week” program organizers will also join hands with the China National Interior Decoration Association (CIDA) and China Interior Design Week to build a design carnival for the city. Not only will 17 pop-up shops of famous buyers in 17 blocks of Shanghai settle in the Maison Blocks, but a graffiti RV named "Bed Connoisseur - Modern" will also be provided at the SWECC to help you kill your time in a more poetic way. Over 100 neighboring furniture stores, coffee shops and galleries will also join, and a special line for design tours (by reservation only) will be provided during the exhibition with multiple buses starting from the SWECC to bring the visitors to selected design corners of the city for an in-depth experience of design culture. Shanghai Home Design Week is between a commercial exhibition and innovation platform, and both a bridge between the two exhibitions and the city, as well as an exhibition laboratory for a new era that lets everybody find their place in September’s carnival of design.

3)Design China: Trends of Aesthetics

Homes make a city, and cities make up a country. Design China, located in Hall 4, is a sector born out of the joint efforts of the Organizers, CNFA and Shanghai UBM Sinoexpo International Exhibition Co., Ltd., in association with CIDA. It is intended to deliver the loudest voice in design attitude by exhibiting trend-leading projects including "Modern Chinese Style", "Home Plus", "China Interior Design Week Theme Exhibition - Design Sharing" and the "Design Dream Show". So far, over 30 famous designers have been invited to show off their talents and display the present and future of "Design China" as well as trends in aesthetics.

"The Modern Chinese Style” project, initiated by Mr. Wang Mingliang, founder of Maison Shanghai and Mr. Chen Baoguang, Deputy Director of the Experts Committee of the CNFA, planned by 11 influential designers in the field of modern Chinese style, including Lu Tao, Zhong Song, Lai Yannan, Hou Zhengguang, Wen Hao, Kong Wu, Wang Xin, Philip Yap, Gao Yang, Zhang Jun and Yang Yuyao, will invite over 40 outstanding domestic furniture brands of modern Chinese style to discuss the lifestyles of modern people in China under the theme of the "Craft & Scene".

"Home Plus" which is being jointly presented by the organizers and AD has invited 12 designers, compared to 10 last year. They are: Ben Wu Bin, Gary Zeng, Xu Ming & Virginie Moriette, Meng Ye, Shen Lei & Sun Yun, Kinnery Chen, Dr. Patrick Leung, Pang Xi, Xie Ke and Chen Lin, and they will create a series of spaces of on-trend colors with the theme of “Designers’ Glowing Life”, which will be an ideal destination for fashion hunting and taking selfies. It is the second year the "Design Dream Show" is being held in cooperation with Red Star Macalline. This year, they will express contemporary fashion trends and attitudes through unusual ways of display. The exhibition area of the 2017 China Interior Design Week will be planned by the well-known curator Professor Yang Dongjiang and be held at the entrance of Hall 4.

Similar to several other halls, Hall 4 will also provide a forum area, where events like the 4th China Home Internet Evolution Forum and NetEase Home "Attitude Debate" will be held to show modern voices with attitude. The China Home Design Conference and Designers' Night will be held in Conference Room No.1 and the square outside of Hall 4 on September 13th.

It is not easy for any visitor to cover all 350,000 square meters of the exhibition area (two venues) in 4 days. The organizers, when considering how to provide visitors with a better experience, have prepared various services for the visitors from the moment they decide to visit the exhibitions in Pudong.

In order to provide visitors with surprises and leave great impressions, the organizers have even arranged RVs as shuttle buses for moving between the two venues to bring you a different experience. It you have not enjoyed the shows enough, the "Design Tour" introduced by the Shanghai Home Design Week will solve the problem of not knowing where to go after the exhibitions by taking you to Shanghai’s new design landmarks.

The event in Shanghai this September will be a major event for the design community. The organizers will also work with cross-industry leaders to jointly build the expo. Apart from the 365-day exhibition platform on www.jjgle.com which provides a one-stop industry search engine, the organizers will also build the ecology of the expo from online to offline, and from domestic trade to foreign trade for the exhibitors centering on the expo as the platform.

(Source: Furniture China)