DORNBRACHT - Butterfly Trading

DORNBRACHT the SPIRITof WATER Design as a part of culture and society
COME OF AGE
AT LAST?
I am small, my heart is pure.At first, before I had
a proper name, my parents had big plans for me:
I was to change the world, create a new society,
improve living conditions for the general public,
reconcile the classes with one another. I was to
be the founder of a new era.
With industrialisation the entire known product
culture was thrown into disarray. Gradually
machine-made, mass-produced goods began to
take the place of products which for centuries had
been made by hand and more or less on an individual
basis. To allay people’s anxiety towards the
new industrial products, at first they were concealed
beneath familiar historicised ornaments.
Soon however a designer avant-garde recognised its
own aesthetics of practical industrial form and with
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FIG. 02
“WG24”
it the social opportunities in the new production
facilities: at last not only the rich but everyone
could enjoy good things. With the release from
historicism at the end of the 19 th century, the
young discipline seemed to have found its destiny:
Design sought practical form and the expression
of a new era. Whether Werkbund or Bauhaus –
design still saw itself as the spearhead of a new
society and wanted to improve living conditions
for the general public.
FIG. 03
“E1027”
Now I have to be sensible. Earlier, when I had
barely come of age, I was suddenly confronted
with enormous challenges: after the war help
was needed quickly, well-considered, sensible
action was needed, not frippery. I had found a
goal, and made common sense the maxim of
my action.
The School of Design in Ulm, founded after
WWII, also saw itself as the new democratic
beginning with which society was to regenerate
itself. With the emphasis on function, its minimalism
and rationality, the School of Design
characterised the image of modernity. “Good
Design”, with little emotion, functional, timeless
and sensible, was for decades to be synonymous
with design. This austerity, however, was not to
the taste of the masses, who certainly had no wish
to live in meagre residential complexes but still
wanted to boast and demonstrate that they had
achieved status and could afford to spend money
again. However the subtle reduction and the
emptiness of modernity became the symbol of
distinction, minimalism became luxury. So design
withdrew from its original goals and became,
without realising it, an object of an intellectual
minority.
I let rip, I want to have fun. I no longer wanted
to be sensible. All society’s demands, all that was
rational and respectable could go to blazes. Off
to pastures new! Away with the old! Give me the
new, the different, the unusual! I had no interest
in what most people thought. I soon discovered
the world of the rich and beautiful and felt fine
there for a while.
Soon the rebellion against functionalism, reason
and sobriety began. The bright colours and interior
designs of the sixties and seventies represented
FIG. 04
“Ulmer Hocker”
an era that wanted to try out new ways of living
together leaving conventions behind. The functionalist
maxim “form follows function” was replaced
by “form follows fun” or “form follows
emotion”. The strident designs of the eighties
finally broke once and for all with the ideas of
functionalism. Although mostly thought of as a
criticism of the dogma of good form, the image
arose in society of a superficial lifestyle discipline,
subsequently aesthetically enhanced, but actually
a dispensable luxury. Design became a meaningless
stylistic term describing everything from “designer
furniture” to “designer clothes” that was out of the
ordinary, was particularly expensive or had been
meaninglessly aestheticised – just as if everything
else had not been designed. Design became the
expression of the world of the superficial.
Nobody is an island. I realised that rebellion is not
a long-term option. And life in the trendy world
gave me no satisfaction either. Perhaps the plans
my parents had for me were not all so bad after
all? Yet times had changed. What ideals can you
fight for now? How can you enrich the world?
The fight against functionalism has been fought,
the dogmas are water under the bridge. Even the
question of where design fitted in between art and
craftsmanship no longer seemed relevant for a
discipline that – just like every other cultural art
form – can no longer be perceived as uniform: the
boundaries between product design, architecture,
fashion, graphics or New Media have become
fluid. With the “New Simplicity” of the nineties
for the first time design returned to its formal
roots, but without reviving the dogmatism. The
new unexciting forms primarily represented the
need for peace in a period which was becoming
increasingly confusing as the result of globalisation
and New Media.
In fact the long-derided discipline was being taken
more seriously as a factor in the fight for market
shares, but at the same time had lost its independence
to marketing. Yet the attempts to measure
design exclusively by successful sales and lifestyles
is being compared by more and more designers
to an approach that does not fit so well in
the marketing specifications: they have set off in
search of content and a new symbolism which no
longer wishes to be neutral but sees subjectivity
as a quality. A young designer generation can
evidently easily combine digital technologies and
new forms with old ornaments, with what is handmade,
traditional, knitted, embroidered, woven
and tucked. It has discovered the value of the stories
things tell us about our culture: from ageing,
custom and usage, rituals and actions. From its
origins and the history of development of the individual
product category. From the wealth of old
craftwork techniques and the ornamental objects
of various cultures, eras and places. From inventors,
designers and enterprises, from predecessors
and archetypes. And so the pattern on the case of
a Dior lipstick tells of the wickerwork of the stools
on which the customers of the Paris fashion house
have been sitting for 60 years. The vase designs of
Hella Jongerius for Ikea reflect traditional ornaments
from all over the world. The Opel designers
conceal a little shark on the glove compartment
of the new Corsa, this allegedly having been
smuggled past all the inspection points of the car
manufacturer, making it all the more charming.
References to archetypical product forms or
homage to historical objects can be seen in the
highly innovative designs of Konstantin Grcic.
Patricia Urquiola ruches her seating articles to
give the effect of blossoms. Kitchens or bathrooms
are no longer accumulations of isolated design
objects but are becoming ritual sites for the user.
Of course design continues to serve commerce,
the changing trends and fashions: from the New
Simplicity and Retro trend, a new digital hightech
aesthetic through to a new bourgeoisie, currently
seen on all sides. Yet only now are many
people beginning to realise that changing styles
need not necessarily mean the opposite of design:
even the steel tubing furniture of the twenties or
the simple box-style designs of post-war modernism,
indeed all “design classics” are children of
their time, who only gain in character through
their history. The contemporaneity of different
styles is also the expression of cultural abundance
and ambivalent social conditions: a high-tech
ornament may be just as much the expression
of the fascination for the new technologies as a
reaction to a threat emanating from them. Trends
and fashions are considered to be signs of our
changing society, without having to dispense with
all that has been here so far. And so realisation is
finally dawning that it is not only articles which
match the idea of a plain, bright chrome “design
style” that are designed, but that the gold-plated
curved tap was also a design once and has a story
to tell.
Whether these approaches represent a real rethinking
for the industry, only time will tell, in the
future where design also has to appreciate its
responsibility for the consequences of unbridled
consumption, globalisation, for production conditions,
ecological questions and the new demands
of the information society. But it appears that a
start has been made: design has begun to free
itself from the role of marketing instrument, to
rediscover its independence and to communicate
that it does not only serve consumption, but
is connected to social developments: as an expression
of topical conditions and requirements,
anxieties and possibilities, fears and hopes for the
future. It is beginning to see its role as an orientation
discipline and again wants to stand for content,
provide meaning and identity. It has found a
new way to access its own history and no longer
DORNBRACHT the SPIRITof WATER Design as a part of culture and society
FIG. 05
“670”
needs to rediscover everything. It sees itself as
part of culture and society. Perhaps design is
coming of age.
FINALMENTE
ADULTO?
Sono giovane e dal cuore puro. Agli inizi, ancor
prima che fosse deciso il mio nome, i miei genitori
nutrivano grandi speranze per me. Avrei
cambiato il mondo, avrei fondato una nuova
società, migliorato le condizioni di vita di masse
immense di persone, riconciliato le classi tra di
loro. Sarei diventato il fondatore di una nuova
epoca.
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