SHANGHAI - An international interior design festival will be held at the Shanghai New International Expo Center on April 9.

The one-week event themed "design leading industry, innovation creating life" is a grand gathering for the world's interior design industry, said Shen Guochen, president of Shanghai Interior Decoration Industry Association.

"It is considered as a strong stimulus to the city's effort to develop its creative industry into a pillar industry," said Shen.

A large number of world-famous interior design masters from the International Federation of Interior Designers and Architects, Italy, Belgium, France and Germany will attend the festival which is co-sponsored by the association and Shanghai UBM Sinoexpo International Exhibition Co Ltd.

Hotelex Design Deco (HDD), a fair for hotels, restaurants, private clubs, bars, shopping malls, boutiques and villas, will be held to echo the festival.

UBM Sinoexpo Managing Director Wang Mingliang said the HDD fair will cover an area of 350,000 square meters with 100,000 purchasers, dealers, wholesalers, designers and architects in attendance.

But it will be held in two different exhibition centers with the main part covering an area of 200,000 square meters at the Shanghai New International Expo Center in Pudong and the remaining 150,000-square-meter space at JSWB Global Home Furnishings Center in the city's Qingpu district, Wang said.

He said the exhibition space for HDD and the festival is expected to reach 500,000 square meters within three years.

"Our purpose is to turn Shanghai into one of the world's famous cluster centers for creative culture just like those at Milan in Italy, Paris in France and New York in the United States," he said.