I went on a research trip. Not to the Arctic, not to the deep sea, no, much better: to the future! 

For the final tongues of the great Lufthansa exclusive magazine, I followed Raphael Gielgen, the busy trend scout of the luxury design furniture brand Vitra, through Shenzen together with my fellow colleague Adrian Pickshaus. 

Raphael Gilgen's workplace is the world. Therefore, he travels around the globe all year round like few other people. Always with the question of what the nature of changed knowledge work will look like in five or ten years' time. Every year, he visits more than 100 companies, start-ups, universities and research institutions. He documents the findings and experiences of his travels on a “panorama”, a map of trends and patterns from around the world and spreads the word in many podcast formats. Overall Raphael Gielgen researches the future of work and the design of working environments. 

When we asked him which of his travels was most likely to give us a glimpse into the future of our world, it was immediately clear: it had to be Shenzen, China. 

A city that was built in a hurry, from a fishing village with 3,000 inhabitants in 1950 to over 17.5 million by 2020, where electric mobility absolutely dominates traffic, while (almost) all of the world's electronics are produced and developed there.

What drove us there was a curiosity about the changes in architecture, technology and society, especially in the context of the working world of tomorrow. We wanted to understand how companies can make the invisible work in front of the computer visible and redefine the community.

Check out what we saw there!