Werkbundkiste
The Werkbundkiste was part of an all-German educational initiative of the Werkbund in the 1950s .
history
In the period of upheaval of the economic miracle , which was shaped by the reconstruction of Germany after the Second World War , it served to support teaching of good form at secondary schools with illustrative material. The various Werkbund boxes contained mass-produced household goods, namely functional objects, sometimes trivial at first glance, such as dishes or kitchen utensils. For example, the shapes and proportions of jugs were examined, drawings made or cuts made. Through this approach to the (admittedly normatively understood) good design, future consumers should be educated in a conscious, today one would say: sustainable consumer behavior. The boxes themselves were carefully designed wooden boxes, in which products from German manufacturers were packed in a deep-drawn blister or in molded foam. About 80 boxes were made and distributed. Werkbund boxes that have survived to this day can be viewed, for example, in the Werkbund archive in Berlin or in the architecture museum of the TU Munich .
background
The Werkbundkiste symbolizes many hopes embodied in German industrial design . The hope of the members of the Werkbund , founded in 1907, was that well-designed things could also contribute to the education of good people. This was also due to the Werkbund members' own involvement with the Nazi dictatorship. This is where the initially democratic and critical potential of German pre-war modern design was at stake. The good form , however, became the collective term for the central ideas of democracy, modesty, functionalism, transparency and openness to be redefined.
criticism
In retrospect, however, industrial mass production did not prove to be the vehicle through which these ideals could be transported. In the 1960s and 1970s, the philosophers Theodor W. Adorno and Albrecht Wellmer stated in lectures to the members of the Werkbund that the Werkbund project and functionalism had failed . The Werkbundkiste reveals the lack of individuality in design decisions, which Adorno indicated in 1965 , because the students did not design things themselves, but analyzed the design at hand. Wellmer's argument of the lack of visibility of contexts of purpose in late modern functionalism can be traced back to the Werkbundkiste insofar as the products were presented in the crate regardless of their use, their design process, their manufacture or their environmental impact.
Web links
- Werkbundkiste
- Picture, Werkbundkiste in the Museum of Things
- Werkbundkiste in the architecture museum of the Technical University of Munich
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sasha Rossma: Transitional Objects: The Postwar Werkbund and the Design of New, West German subjects (1948-1968). Retrieved June 22, 2018 .
- ↑ Christopher Oestereich: Gute Form "under reconstruction: On the history of product design in West Germany after 1945. Lukas, Berlin, ISBN 978-3-931836-43-6 .
- ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Functionalism Today. Lecture given at the conference of the German Werkbund in Berlin on October 23, 1965 . In: Collected Writings . tape 10 . Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp 1977, p. 131 .
- ^ Albrecht Wellmer: Art and industrial production. On the dialectic of modern and postmodern . In: On the dialectic of modernity and postmodernism. Critique of reason according to Adorno . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985.
- ^ Albrecht Wellmer: Art and industrial production. On the dialectic of modern and postmodern . In: On the dialectic of modernity and postmodernism. Critique of reason according to Adorno . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 131 .