Photos featuring items designed by Lei Kuiyuan are on display at China Academy of Arts in Hangzhou.(WANG KAIHAO/CHINA DAILY)
In 1929, the West Lake Expo was held in Hangzhou, and it helped the local economy of the capital of East China's Zhejiang province, which until then had been struggling due to war and social turmoil.
Decades later, models of the expo's pavilions are on display at an ongoing exhibition organized by Hangzhou-based China Academy of Arts. The show tells the story of how the pavilions were designed mixing Chinese and Western styles.
Design Road, China Academy of Arts, which opened on Saturday, advocates Eastern design and reviews China's design history from the founding of the academy in 1928. The show offers a wide spectrum of exhibits from architecture to fashion and articles of daily use, all from the institute's own collection.
"The mixing of Chinese and Western styles was revealed by the expo pavilions, and has been inherited by the school," says Xu Jiang, president of the academy."Today's definition of design has greatly changed, but we don't want the original simple styles, which are closer to nature, to be harmed by the wave of globalization.
"The exhibition is to let us know better where we come from and remain conscious like our ancestors."
The academy is China's first national higher-education institution for the arts, with an early design school in place.
The exhibition took one year to prepare on the basis of in-depth studies of China's design history in general and the school's evolution.
And, this is only a part of a series of projects the academy has initiated to showcase the beauty of Chinese designs.
While Western designs have expanded to Chinese people's daily lives, ranging from houses to furniture, scholars attending the exhibition feel it is time for a resurrection of Eastern design.
The academy has invited many Western designers to give lectures to students about experiences in their home countries, says Wu Haiyan, head of the academy's design school.
"After more than 30 years of reform and opening-up, China has formed its own experiences," she says. "What is needed now is to establish an academic system to combine them."
