* * Figures without habitus. Contemporary design. Arts-on observered the Danner Design Award, design report and *Hochparterre*
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Design. Michael Schirner sometimes compared it with Malevitch's square (espec. at the opening exhibition of the International Design Center Berlin, 1988), others with a kind of communion ( "The sun reflects even in a - designed - coffee spoon") Not only the real meaning of the word - "design" - is shockingly unlimited. In view of the design history of recent decades, the design concept of regions and the heterogeneous application areas mainly gets visible, what is covered by magazines such as FORM, Design Report, Hochparterre, Norm, by quasi-educational selective reporting and an obvious focussing on industrial design: Design has no * habitus * (Concept is lend by Bourdieu, means something like a socially identifying, personally relevant habit).
Fashion design is perhaps a trivial example, but quite significant. For producers, design is a means to sell, ideally through a quality improvement coming along with thoughts about the malleability of the material and physical aspects of the form and then merges effectfully with the brand name. In the fields of fashion, this principle tends to cross the division between Haute Couture and Pret A Porter, even if only "still". While typically the "no name" principle was connected with the latter, it becomes usual to develop low-cost brands like H & M or Orsay - perhaps comparable with Ikea - to something like a fashion concept, that might even be connected to personal and real designer names or teams instead of individual stars like Coco Chanel and Vivienne Westwood. CC stands in her design's origins for the realism of haute couture, fashion design to wear daily, while Vivienne created her shirts for the Sex Pistols after they won a quasi-casting competition, that * designed (at least conceptualized) them as punk musicians, their Westwood T-Shirts-for-shredding- and their behaviour for London and its Queen to stop chance in such London Calling cases of emergency . CC would be comparable with Dieter Rams thus, who is appreciated with major reports and interviews in one of the design report's recent issues (november 08). The Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz), German Design Prize, a.s.o.., all of these for a kind of one-and-only representative of the consumer-oriented industrial design: electric toothbrushes and consumer electronics. After the coffee spoon principle, there is really only one product of Rams and Braun that has become a notoriuos hit: it is not the Charles Eames chair, the Alessi kettle, the Brandolini sausage (as a carpet motif) but the „Schneewittchensarg“, which was designed by Hans Gugelot (Ulmer Hochschule für Gestaltung) and Dieter Rams – a radio-phono player with internal loud-speakers, its real name Braun SK4.
Brown is rather connected with the soundness of products - batteries keep their power for some time, keys can be used more than two or three times, caps lock instead of cancelling immediately, devices can be operated. Much of this is actually not perfectly understandable by itself and also a question of product design, which has an effect on consumers just as antisensational satisfaction and brand name loyalty. The "Snow White's coffin" - a product of the fresh start in the fifties, which received its value out of the special situation. Especially the combination of loud speakers that are internally fixed into the sound production component had no forming effect but was it traditional and just in a way expression of its time's hidden psychological state: It "magically protected" the mythical shellac discs, themselves symbols of the displacement of war and terror by innocent entertainment (in a way a continuing strategy, we have unfortunately to tell with raised forefinger). But the point of interest: Myths can be created even in industrial design for the * masses *. Thus, craftmanship loses an advantage, because its artsy-like drawings usually don't solve the main problem industrial design has to cope with: How something can be produced economically and technically efficient that gives cultural aspects room for expression.
But industry is also a false standard, for example, unuseful if you look at the whole different flower ornaments and other jewelry on the surface of tea cups and cans such as Rosenthal's, a big supporter of corporate culture and design. The design magazines wouldn't be to blame. They report on everything that somehow can be considered for Awards or is educated or discussed at design colleges and universities, even if because of the journalist's specialization everything somehow seems preweighted and bad balanced. Significantly, perhaps, that only the Handelsblatt, one of all german important weekly magazines or national daily newspapers, has its own correspondent for and an editorial focus on design – while weeklys like * Die Zeit * take the subject into account as an issue to prepare Christmas and its presents at the utmost (to left-wing? Or simply tradition ? Comp. JungeWelt not only to understand this but to recognize how odd old ideas can be if they are out of their twens – I guess, Professor Bolz wears a beard that allows him to play Coke's Santa...). Also, the surface, the ornament, has to become form, and must ideally enter the static and the "Living World" (in the sense of Wittgenstein's * Lebenswelt *) of a company (like the Rosenthal company tends to handle it) and of its customers. That also goes for clothes, whose design is not just fashion design and almost new just to be sold in every new season, but design in the spirit of "depth" design, especially with the material in mind - and this not even primarily under aesthetical aspects such as in art but functional. Hochparterre, the Swiss design and architecture magazine, reports continuingly about such innovations and problems in the area of material's substances – like clothes made of wool or even translucent concrete. The magazine itself, even if only limited successful, was bought from the publisher by its editorial-office group because they felt love for their work and now created a vital neighbor to the german Design report – both fancy materials and techniques of creations, of course. Thus, the professional magazines value technological ideas, which are sometimes actually better located in electrical engineering: materials and components, their states of aggregation, specific heat capacity at constant volume and funny things like that. Looking at sportswear, the progress is actually visible while materials and techniques are concerned, while everything *just visible* is left to fashion – the material innovations come along with aesthetic expressions just in rarest cases, what seems to be one of the biggest problems for sports. Jackets are thick, pompous and crass, as if they should be reminiscent of Dark Vader's Costumes or various styles of Spider – and Supermen..And not just ski sports, hiking and hacking, but such problems are even found in ice-skating. Who designs in the area of ice-skating the packaging for self staging? Couture? Or are the companies afraid because of trademark conflicts? Sometimes, in any case, costumes are just tasteless tissues and actually an open field for the arts, because the meager pieces with exuberant decorations oftenly adored by ice skaters, are hard to handle for aesthetically developed eyes not as sensation keen as the sometimes tv-squary above 60. And unlike standardized sportswear for riders and ballet dancers ice skater might wear what they like to wear. Thus, guess to have ice skating costumes designed by Rebecca Horn. Peacock's feathers won't make necessarily a problem for statics or be in any way dysfunctional. So similar to this idea, but much selfreduced, pretty, an almost spider like ruff as a necklace, perhaps a bit reminiscent to toby collars of the Dutchman in the 17th century, the special prize of Danner looks like, building quite a sharp contrast to the white and offensively earthenware crafty Laureates number 1 (Oh well, there are of course far too few white porcelains or ceramics in the dozens of shops, dedicated especially to white ceramics). Thus, the model for designs in bavaria seems to be still Meister Eder and his Pumuckel, resp. his doll furniture bed and swing for the invisible favorite son and Klabauter Pumuckel - after all a literary top product, in the quite successful films also visually: The movies have an excellent, sophisticated and affectionate trick design! Meister Eder and his Pumuckel do urgently invite to a reflection on design toys beside from myths about woddenness and "children without taste“ carelessness (just supporting Barbie and the car industry) Design of educating games, media dependencies, Barbie Fashion and contemporary history, health issues ...too jerkwater as a subject for design institutions ?
While the health issue is top – this seems to be in need of completeness – not to be discussed as a detail but as a whole house, an area, an environment. Thus, we find the subject in Hochparterre and architecture, rarely in the general design section. The house, thus, shall be * passive * A house generating its own energy and requiring no heating, built from materials that guarantee not to cause cancer. As a contented inhabitant of an involuntary semi-passive apartment with South Front and strong warming effect even of winter sun, the walls covered with natural pigments, I remember what the seller of the natural colors told me about a customer, who got completely despaired with them because of the irregular placement of pigments and the lack of guarantee that the color keeps sealed and doesn't react with another substance. To care about contact with the walls becomes a necessary routine...(of course, just for some weeks). Actually, no design theme - or is it? However, the natural colors were found in the context of a natural food shop. In the transition to a healthy diet, as topos on the health of the "Living World" How should, therefore, if design is torn in diverse themes and topics as fashion, sports, production, handicraft, ornament, function, common sense, health, technical innovation etc. a habitual regularium, ever arise, at least informally, that could take at least the costume designs of ice skaters under its wings and finally takes considerable efforts to create something adequately? Is not possible because countless grandmas dominate this sport in front of their television sets? They won't cope with half naked in peacock feathers and eggs? In simple designs coloured like natural skin? Thus the terrible and almost shocking shown by the Danner prizes, is that design doesn't truly emancipate itself to the habit of innovation but is still arrested - the special prize literally lies in chains – to make things in unsophisticated ways easy, and to care about acceptance in the market along purely superficial, just visual means. And it is precisely this principle, to try to be acceptable for all, that works as perpendicular to the design idea of diversification of prevailing styles, switching and differentiation, whether products need pure functionality - like the Billy shelf - or just a funny, witty or at least special habitus, a style, or whatever - things and aspects of everyday life, with which ordinary consumers can master sovereignly, while design universalizing bobs up and down. The design report 5 / 08 gives proofs to this hypothesis also in a check up of design in Poland. Industrial design, folklore and traditions of propagandism meet to more or less incompatible blends with the quest for an appealing appearance together. What is especially worth because it shows how horrible difficult everything and everything's design is ....
Design magazines:
Hochparterre. Zeitschrift für Architektur und Design. Zurich. Issue 11/2008 Danner Designpreis. Catalogue Book Danner Designpreis. (Danner Design Award). H2- Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst. (H2-Center for Contemporary Art). Until 6th January in connection with the collection's presentation "New Art Collection III" (until the end of March). H2 - Zentrum für Gegenwartskunst H2 - Center for Contemporary Art Report and photos: Dr. Ulrike Ritter
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