ORIENTAL DESIGN WEEK IN TURIN. BRIDGE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST

The first edition of Oriental Design Week Turin is just ended. We’re used to see it in Milan during the Salone del Mobile, with Fuorisalone Sarpi Bridge, but this year it was decided to strengthen the bridge between East and West even at home, by creating a new one between Milan and Turin, in the field of design at least. The aim is to provide a global perspective of the discipline, in a context of interdependence and especially economic and inspiration exchange. Creativity is a universal language, and in Turin we could appreciate China’s, Korea’s and India’s but also of realities “halfway” of the bridge, like that of Iran, involving young designers, in the project is DESIGNato, dedicated to those who have chosen to make of design their profession, and established names like Sakura Adachi, John Bennett and Brian Sironi. This outlined a Design Week where exhibitions were alternated to workshops, installations and performance, making of multiculturalism an asset and highlighting some interesting trends: on one hand the Oriental design manages to merge local functionality with Western aesthetics, as in sophisticated screens of MicroMacro; on the other designers’ vision at the East of Europe shows how a concrete political or social commitment may become the inspiration for works on the border with contemporary art: examples include Barcode rugs, dedicated to artist Zhang Rui and his paintings, complaint of unbridled and globalized consumerism.