Tag: shanghai

12/02/2019

Getting ready for the next Chinese trip

We are flying to Shanghai in 10 days for the 5th times. I am still teaching Interior Design in Shanghai SCF – Dongua University.
It was time to get through the pictures I took there in October/November/December

During the week-ends we had the chance to visit Xian to see the mind Blowing Terracotta Army and went for a hiking trip with Hiking Lovers to Xianju Gong Yu, where we slept in a tent by 5 degrees 🙂 .

We also saw some great exhibitions/installations:

The Eternal Thread by Louise Bourgeois @ Long Museum West bund
Mind Temple @ MOCA
The incredible “Shanghai Biennale” exhibition called Proregress @ Power Station of Art
Mumbling Mud by Katharina Grosse @ Chi K11
The Rain Room by Random International & The Artist is present by Maueizio Cattelan @ Yüz Museum
Construction of reality by Leandro Erlich & a Joseph Beuys exhibition @ How art museum
Cindy Sherman exhibition @ Bund Finance Centre
Partial Phenomena by Zheng Lu @ Shanghai Gallery of Art
Incarnation by Yao Jui-Chung @ Swatch Art Peace Hotel

08/05/2018

Shanghai, Disneyland , Longxu Mountain, Beijing, Great Wall of China

A selection of pictures from our latest trip in China.
I was still teaching Interior Design in Shanghai SCF – Dongua University. I am proud and would like to congratulate the fourth years students who are currently exhibiting their final year project for the FIRST-EVER SCF Graduate Exhibition 2018.

During the week-ends we had the chance to be there for the Lantern Festival, visited Disneyland Shanghai, went for a hiking trip with Hiking Lovers to the Longxu Mountain (very hard but worth it, it was stunning) and finally went for 3 days in Beijing and hiked on the Great wall (I would recommend anyone who want to do it to contact John – Here is Beijing . He is great and you will experience the wall by your own).

04/12/2017

Shanghai for the love of Art, Teaching & Food

I am just back from Shanghai, where I had the pleasure and honor to teach Interior Design for 5 weeks at Donghua University representing Edinburgh University. The students have a lot to teach us all over here about passion, hard work and positivity.

It was 5 amazing weeks with my great colleagues and mon amoureux. In our free time we visited lots of galleries (list bellow of some of the best exhibitions I have seen), spend a day walking and riding in Hangzhou around the west Lake and we went for a week end in the mountains. We stayed in xia yan bei village (下岩贝村), hiked 19 peaks (穿岩十九峰), the Hanfei river ( 韩妃江) and dao tuo xue (倒脱靴). And of course had some amazing food: hot pot, dumplings, wonton soups, noodles, Chinese crepes, vegan dishes…

I am starting to learn basic Chinese to prepare our next trip in March, looking forward to it.

chi K11 – .com/.cn
The work exhibited is digital / conceptual art. What we found most interesting for your practice is the building in itself.
MOCA Shanghai – Apple+
The exhibition highlights Japanese designer Ken Miki’s four decades of practice as well as his unique approach to design thinking and education, summarized in what he promotes as “Learning to Design, Designing to Learn”.
Rockbund Art Museum – Hugo Boss Asia Art 2017
High-profile award that honors emerging contemporary artists in the early stages of their artistic creation and exhibition practices.
Long Museum West Bund – Antony Gormley
The first major presentation of Antony Gormley’s work in China. At its core is Critical Mass II (1995) an installation of 60 life-size cast iron body forms.
Power station of Art – Balkrishna Doshi, Shigeru Ban & Li Shan
Shigeru Ban : What is the architectural content to be presented possibly only by exhibitions? The first half of the Exhibition will introduce the disaster relief projects across the world, & the second half of the Exhibition will introduce the projects in progress and the projects in China.
Li Shan : he gave up his decades-long familiarity with painting, and turned his artistic thinking to topics that are related with bio-science. He claimed to be creating on a canvas once reserved only for the God, and created a new artistic discipline: BioArt.
Balkrishna Doshi: Celebrating Habitat-The Real, the Virtual & the Imaginary. The exhibition showcases more than thirty pieces of the Indian architect’s notable works, including personal and public housing, community projects, educational institution, urban planning and furniture design.
Modern Art Museum – Hello, My Name is Paul Smith
Touring exhibition showcasing the fashion designer’s journey in building his company, as well as his stylistic tastes and eye for design.
Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum – Sonsara by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot
“It is a project of imagination and contemplation, containing the reflection of the symbiosis and a control system for human and nature. The two issues that the exhibition wants to discuss, “how humans co-exist with the artificial nature” and “building an ecology, imaging the world after human”, constitute the two sides of the non-zero-sum game between human and non-human beings.”
Dialogue In The Dark
Very exciting life-changing experiences where visitors are guided by blind guides in absolute darkness. You get a chance to experience space and daily environments of life without your sight. Daily routines become exciting and a reversal of role is created where sighted become blind and Blind become sighted. It was a life changing experience.

20/12/2016

Teaching Interior Design in Shanghai

I had the huge honour to go in Shanghai to be a Senior Teaching Fellow Interior Design responsible for representing the work of Edinburgh University in interior design within the context of Donghua University – Shanghai International College of Fashion and Innovation (and the wider MoE of China).
I taught Interior Design from year 1 to 4 the key skills associated with the discipline, giving tutorials, supervised activities and presentations, organised visits and assessed the work of the students, providing feedback at the end of the 5 weeks projects.

I had the pleasure to work with amazing colleagues: Sam Booth, Designer and Founder of Echo Living was my direct colleague in Interior Design (thank You Sam for these two amazing weeks, I feel very lucky of being able to work with you and mostly meeting you and your beautiful values), Emily Ford-Halliday and Elena Tsyplakova from Fashion (thank you too for your kindness and energy) and the all team in Shanghai: Linn, MingJu and Steve (thank you for let us feel welcome and your support).

I was blown away with the standard of the work the students produced, amazed by their determinations, passion and hard work. Thank you all, I am missing working with you, it was a truly exceptional experience.