Seminar & Exhibition Series

Muthesius University for Art and Design
2017 – 2018

A seminar at Muthesius University by Matylda Krzykowski, turned into a hybrid project, an approach to design education, with Annika Frye. Website Digital Interface  by Benjamin Unterluggauer and Matylda Krzykowski. Catalogue Printed Interface by Annika Frye and Matylda Krzykowski.

A Contemporary Understanding of Design – The concept of the Werkbundkiste (Werkbund crate) was developed in the 1950s by the Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen). The Werkbund was founded in 1907 as an association of artists, architects and entrepreneurs, at the suggestion of Hermann Muthesius et al., the eponym of our Muthesius University, which was also founded in 1907. The various Werkbundkisten contained mass-produced household goods; functional everyday objects such as tableware or kitchen appliances. About 80 of these boxes were distributed to schools as visual aids in order to anchor the utopian idea of the democratic Gute Form among future consumers in the period of upheaval that the economic miracle during the reconstruction of Germany constituted. It is hard to imagine today that people believed at that time that they could convey a sustainable and democratic concept of design on the basis of a box full of household objects alone. For today the process draws more attention than he product in design. So what would be the current format of a Werkbundkiste?

Muthesius Parallax shows processes, methods, tools and attitudes instead of finished products. The spatial interface is an approach to mediating design education. This form of approach to process-based design aims to convey to visitors a conscious—today one would say contemporary—understanding of design.

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With Jakob Brand, Katharina Graff, Franziska Schneider, Benjamin Unterluggauer, Alex Niggemeyer, Leon Clausen, Sebastian Kommer, Henrieke Neumeyer, Hansol Kim, Thank you to Simon Denny, Veronica Ranner, Ingo Gerken and Christoph Knoth.