Designing Desires: Cultures, Commerce and Creativity in Late-Socialist Chinese Interior Design

The last four decades have seen China’s interior design transform rapidly from a decoration-based subsidiary role within the construction sector into a pivotal service industry crucial to economy. This new salience of design and innovation in both economic and cultural life presents an important opportunity for studies on creativity, commercial practice and cultural production. By drawing on original research materials and secondary data, this thesis examines the intrinsic operations of the interior design world and the professional life of its practitioners, including design business owners and individual designers. It traces the trajectories of modern design from its historical roots to the present, highlighting the proliferation and entrepreneurialisation of interior design, particularly evident in Shenzhen’s transformation into a contemporary design hub since the reform era. This shift has led to an unprecedented production of design professionals, driven by real estate markets and intellectual property rights protection, and ongoing human capital cultivation shaped by both the state and the design sector. Central to their professional life are not only industrialisation, culturalisation and aestheticisation of interiors, but also differentiation from existing products in a competitive market, which is achieved through varying degrees of innovation and originality to counter mindless imitation of foreign styles. While a significant change in practice has occurred involving the hybridisation of modernist design with Chinese and oriental elements, the industry demonstrates a persistent incorporation of Western design elements, knowledge, and standards. Simultaneously, there exists a continuity of Confucian learning practices through skilful copying. Focused on the design economy, this thesis underscores how late-socialist neoliberal logics of efficiency, profitability and responsibilities to oneself and the nation are constitutive of the process of subject formation. This process entails not only the reproduction of regulatory norms but also the concurrent exploration of alternative practices to align with commercial goals and personal ideals.