Welche Welt woll(t)en wir? Vom Nutzen, Designwissen zu bewahren

Symposium of the Society for Design History in cooperation with the Dieter and Ingeborg Rams Foundation, the German Design Council / German Design Museum Foundation, and the Association of German Industrial Designers (VDID)

Design has a profound impact on our everyday lives. It influences how we perceive things, how we interact with each other, and how our culture develops. The path to an analog or digital product is just as important as the result itself. This is because the process reveals the values, goals, and decisions behind a design.

Nevertheless, there are hardly any common standards for documenting and preserving such processes. While archives in other areas have clear guidelines, the DACH region lacks a uniform collection practice for documents and models from the design process. At the same time, many designers often do not know which materials from their work process should be archived for later research, or how and where.

Supplementary documents from economic, cultural, and technical archives, in addition to models and documents from design archives, can help to better understand the context in which products and services were created. At the same time, outside the discipline of design, there is often a lack of knowledge about the specifics of the design process or factors that determine design, such as costs, materials, manufacturing technology, or construction. Perhaps this is the reason why, even in these thematically related archives, which often convey the perspective of the clients, there are still no uniform rules for collecting, archiving, and cataloging artifacts and documents from the design process. As a result, important sources often remain unused. Only when such materials are systematically recorded and made searchable through metadata can we understand the values, ideas, and goals that have shaped the design of things and, in turn, society. Collections and archives are also important for communicating design processes in exhibitions or other formats and stimulating an understanding of the potential of the discipline in society.

This historical perspective is central when we examine past creative processes in order to discuss the kind of world we want to live in in the future. The Society for Design History and its partner organizations are therefore addressing the topic of preserving specialist knowledge in an interdisciplinary public symposium. The focus is on design holdings in archives, archival practice, memory culture, and design criticism—and their significance for social coexistence.

Society for Design History in cooperation with the Dieter and Ingeborg Rams Foundation, the German Design Council / German Design Museum Foundation, and the Association of German Industrial Designers (VDID)