‘Shenzhen is a place of hope: it’s young and energetic, full of hard-working people trying to make their life better’ Xiaodu Liu

It all adds up to a huge incentive for makers to get their offering right first time around.

Although the counterfeit culture is receding, it’s still possible to start a business with a smartphone and a little money. In Shenzhen, if you want to buy raw materials, they don’t ask to see your ID or even know your real name. ‘It really feels like anything is possible here,’ says Fiona Lau, one half, with Kain Picken, of Ffixxed Studios, a fashion label that came to SZ after stints in Melbourne, Berlin and Hong Kong. ‘When we first came, we just walked around Wutong Shan until we found a vacant building; we were able to sign a lease that day and set up a sample studio the next. Things can happen really quickly.’ The pair now show in Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo.

Shenzhen’s young designers, architects and creators – the city’s average age is 27 – are changing the very fabric of the city itself. And they are doing it fast. The speed, says Jason Hilgefort of L+CC, a new independent academy for urbanism, landscape and public art, is Shenzhen’s defining characteristic. ‘Traditional urbanism was about order; here we embrace the unpredictable and the messy. Europe and North America can feel so over-designed – for better or worse. Due to the rapidity with which Shenzhen was rolled out, a framework was established and allowed to be filled in. But often, in the overlooked corners of this hastily laid network, truly original forms of living and working have emerged among what Rem Koolhaas has said is the inspiration for the “generic city”.’

Shenzhen’s town planners focused the original SEZ in the current Luohu, Futian, Nanshan and Yantian districts, with Luohu once boasting the city’s tallest tower, the D1. However, in the past five years, the district of Shekou has emerged as a hotspot – and it’s in Shekou where the crown jewel of Shenzhen’s new cultural development, the Shekou Design Museum – a joint collaboration between the V&A and China Merchants Shekou Holdings (CMSK) – will be completed in 2017.

‘By supporting the development of CMSK’S Design Museum and opening the first ever V&A Gallery in China, we want to contribute to the emergence of a new design scene driven by creativity and innovation in Shenzhen, and witness a real transition from “made” to “created” in China,’ says Luisa Mengoni, head of the V&A Gallery at the new museum. ‘We hope to create opportunities of international exchange and dialogue for Chinese and foreign designers based in SZ, and encourage the introduction of critical design thinking and practices. That’s our ambition and our dream.’

In Shenzhen, it’s all but impossible to escape this kind of talk and grand ambition. But then, that’s understandable. Shenzhen is the place, increasingly, where grand ambitions are actually realised.»