The cult of German design tells of industrial strength driven by the functionalist legacy of the Bauhaus, but is this narrative anything more than Cold War propaganda? The first paragraphs of this Icon piece on postwar German design are below – again, there were some great products featured in the the original version.
First shown in Doha this autumn, Driven by German Design was ex-V&A director Martin Roth’s last major project before his death. A handsome, generous enumeration of the country’s design achievements from the postwar period until today, the exhibition was initiated as part of Years of Culture, an annual programme run by Qatar Museums to develop stronger ties with countries through exchanges of art, culture, heritage and sport.
As such, it is unashamedly propaganda, funded by Volkswagen and boasting Germany’s foreign ministry and the Goethe Institute among its partners. Yet it leaves peripatetic, drum-beating efforts such as Japanese Design Today or 100 Objects of Italian Design in its wake, with scholarship and breadth that shames most museum displays. Promoted as a celebration of Germany’s greatest design icons, it achieves far more. Intelligently crafted films accompany its 365 exhibits, many of them studies or models. Objectives are educational as well as academic. Sets of research prototypes demonstrate the diverse ways that designers form and pursue ideas, as well as the wider roles they play in current industrial practice, and in our smart futures. And, of course, a hefty offering of gleaming German automobiles, along with an interactive engine room, ensures a primal appeal.
The propaganda aspect is relatively simple – definitions of good design are proffered; Germany’s design is chronicled; the two merge into one. But there are subtler messages. Thanks in large part to Bauhausian modernism, design has undergone ‘a paradigm shift … no longer the product, but the process, is at the heart of design practice’. German design, ‘famous for its emphasis on functionality’, has lead the way, yet ‘in no way neglects the form – on the contrary: it is precisely the reduction to what is important and the avoidance of everything that limits usability that is at the origin of the unique aesthetics German design is famous for’.
First published in Icon 175, January 2018. To read the rest of the feature, click here.
