Politecnico hosted at Future Lab in Shanghai

The Future Lab of the West Bund Arts and Design Education Fair, a leading international trade fair in the sector, was inaugurated last Saturday in Shanghai, with the participation of  Politecnico di Torino as the only Italian university.

Due to the difficulties of being physically far away from China, Polito participation has been made concrete thanks to the enthusiasm and the planning and organisational capability of the new-born "Polito Alumni Association in China", which supervised contents, design and events related to our Politecnico trade fair booth. All this represented also an opportunity to show our Alumni in China’s skills in the field of architecture and design, through the presentation of some success stories.

Registered last 20 October at the Shanghai Consulate, the Association is gathering the former students of Chinese nationality (already more than 2000 graduates from the Politecnico di Torino), as well as the community of former students of Italian nationality living in China. The association's President is Ing. Francesco Polistena (FCA Shanghai), while the Vice President is Arch. Michele Armando (Q&A Architecture Design Research, Shanghai); among the most active promoters the Association can count on Xi ZhiXia (active in Beijing in the automotive sector, former President of the Polito Chinese Students Association), Yu Zhang (professor of Architecture at Harbin HIT) and Tao Huang (researcher at Turin Polytechnic).

And it was they, the latter, who coordinated a great solidarity operation on behalf of the Chinese Alumni who donated face masks and COVID prevention devices to our University in spring 2020 for a total of over 20,000 euros. This wonderful act of generosity was the starting point for the launch of the Association.

The establishment of the Association, strongly supported by our Rector Prof. Saracco, represented an important step through which our University will be able to strengthen even more its relations with China and its Alumni, managed by the Vice Rectors Prof. Michele Bonino and Prof. Carla Fabiana Chiasserini.

"The West Bund Fair initiative focused on the strong bond between our University and the community of its Alumni in China, a bond that Polito wanted to make official and even stronger thanks to the Association. We warmly invite all Alumni of Chinese or Italian nationality in China to join it," said Prof. Chiasserini.

"In the current period, where interacting with China is pretty difficult, the Association represents an exceptional model of comparison and a “foothold”, as well. And not only thanks to the generous commitment of the Alumni in a geographical area that we cannot reach, but especially because of their roots in the Chinese production, academic and cultural systems" added Prof. Bonino.