Adventures in space: Britain helps Shenzhen create design museum as showcase of its transformation

Partnership between London's Victoria and Albert Museum and a state-owned Chinese logistics company to open a design museum in Shenzhen is another sign of the special economic zone's cultural clout

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An artist's impression of the Shekou Design Museum by Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. It is scheduled to open in 2017.

Published: 12:30am, 22 Sep 2015Updated: 3:50pm, 22 Sep 2015

It is the start of a long weekend celebrating the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in the second world war. A group of friends, including a Tsinghua University professor, a founder of one of China's leading architectural practices, and the owner of a well-known local music venue, are chewing the fat in designer Huang Yang's office in Shenzhen.

The conversation flows comfortably around a coffee table laden with fruit and cups of tea, moving from town planning disasters to the making of digital replicas of the Mogao Grottoes. Luisa Mengoni, the lone Westerner in the room, sits relaxed, occasionally interjecting in perfect Putonghua.

The Italian expert on Chinese art has become firmly embedded in the city's cultural circle since arriving about a year ago as head of the future V&A Gallery at Shekou, western Shenzhen - a partnership with London's celebrated Victoria and Albert Museum.

Luisa Mengoni visits the site of the Shekou Design Museum. Photo: Enid Tsui

"It is fascinating to map," she says of the vibrant design industry that has developed in China's youngest megacity. "There's been a graphic design industry here since the 1990s to serve local factories, but individuals like Huang represent the new generation and they are doing such interesting things."

Mengoni, who studied at Wuhan University in the early 1990s, is here to help lay the groundwork for a new museum belonging to the China Merchants Group. Scheduled to open at the start of 2017, the museum has been designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Fumihiko Maki and has a working title of Shekou Design Museum. The low-rise, light-filled structure near the Sea World metro station will house three elements dedicated to promoting the cross-cultural value of design: the V&A Gallery, a branch of Ma Weidu's Guanfu private museum and the museum's own collection.

Ever since the 163-year-old British art and design museum agreed in June 2014 to become China Merchant Group's consultant and to set up its first overseas offshoot within the Shenzhen museum, people have been questioning how it would find common ground with a state-owned Chinese logistics, trading and property development conglomerate based in Hong Kong.