The world changes and China changes too. A new cultural wave says that quantity has to give way to quality. The economic slowdown (though in any case the performance is enviable) makes the demand side of the market more selective, and as a result the supply side has to do some soul searching. Contractors, developers and investors in Chinese real estate and high-end hospitality are looking for “plans B.” It is no longer sufficient to be brands dealing in design and luxury; today specific vertical specializations are required, new forms of flexibility. Companies have to be able to respond to design necessities with speed and reliability. Contract – residential, for hospitality, or in the very fashionable mixed-use mode – is about to change its skin: Chinese buyers, after having traveled around the world many times, have developed international sensibilities. Their tastes have been augmented by nuance, and the interior design now being offered is convincing proof.
But China is not only about quality imports. Today it is above all about exporting of ideas: the hundreds of projects IFDM evaluates every year show that Chinese interior designers are creating attractive spaces, striking for their taste and balance, their capacity to use color and form.
The so-called New Normal has led to rebalancing of the relationships between those who sell and those who at the same time buy and export ideas.
A state of the art that IFDM has photographed in its latest Contract & Hospitality Books: the International edition is full of stimuli arriving from the East; and this Chinese edition is full of projects arriving from the rest of the world.
Towards an incessant exchange whose growth raises a big question mark, between two exclamation points.
Happy reading!
