Danish Design Danish Design Spring 2017
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
1/12/2017 Danish Design Danish Design Danish Design Spring 2017 Copenhagen Credits: 3 Major Disciplines: Architecture, Art History, Design Faculty Member: Kasper Lægring Program Director: Henning Thomsen Course Assistant: Kate Johnston Tuesdays and Fridays 11:4013:00 Classroom: V10B25 Description of course: This course offers a survey of Danish Design focusing foremost on the postwar era (19451960s). It focuses on a design tradition that is world renowned for, amongst other things, humanism, highquality craftsmanship, functionality, simplicity, precision, contextualism, comprehensiveness, and continuity between tradition and modernity. Thus, this course will naturally probe wider issues of aesthetics and ethics. Design is never merely a question of the beauty of forms or surfaces alone—especially not in Danish praxes. This course shall endeavor to make indepth examinations into individual design fields, movements, and examples, striving to reveal the many essential considerations, questions and contexts that are situated behind the final outward appearances of some of Denmark’s most successful postwar designs. Zooming in on Danish contexts, we will explore the meanings and purposes of design, as well as communicate in grounded ways about the uses of design artifacts and the tasks of Danish design in creating the Welfare State. A few of the fundamental questions for the course, which will arise ongoing as we inquire more deeply ‘beyond the appearance of things’ include: Why do these designs look the way they do? What factors—sociocultural, environmental, political, economic, tectonic, etc.—influence a design’s particular formal and material articulations? How has the designer come to arrive at her/his final results? What are the designer’s personal viewpoints, and how do these relate to their design strategies, methods, and ultimate design(s)? How do these viewpoints and disciplines relate to currents within the wider culture of the time; locally and internationally? What are some of the key qualities and threads uniting the various design praxes and design histories in Denmark? What are some of the principal reasons for the successful endurance and evolutions of postwar Danish designs in contemporary times? Quo Vadis? Course Structure: The course is structured around the following five sections, each of which deals with a certain scale. We will move through these scales in the course of the semester: Section 1: What Is Danish Design? An introduction to the term 'Danish Design.' It furthermore aims to establish a platform for the course—how to critically study and communicate design topics and how to discuss cultural products in general. We will spend time on classic texts and key sites for locating the roots of Danish Design. The origins of Architectural Design in Denmark will also be investigated. https://canvas.disabroad.org/courses/650 1/5 1/12/2017 Danish Design Section 2: Scale Interior Encompasses three main themes, all connected to the notion of dwelling that is so central to Danish and Scandinavian Design: Interior Design, Furniture Design, and Lighting Design. Our first field study will be to a furniture production company—a workshop, not a factory—in order to gain understanding of traditional furniture design and production. What does working with wood entail in terms of ethos, production time, and production costs? We will also enjoy a guided tour of the Design Museum's current exhibition and have our first Symposium. Section 3: Scale Nordic Dedicated to the Nordic or Scandinavian perspective. In the 1950s, the traveling exhibition, 'Design in Scandinavia,' traveled across the USA and Canada, shaping a particular set of shared values that lingers on to the present day. The landscapes of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland are vastly different, but the Welfare State was seen as a common denominator, and as a driver for design innovation. Likewise, a shared notion of Functionalism served to position the Nordic approach as different from—and more humanist than—mainstream Modernism and International Style. We will put these claims to the test in our two Symposia. Section 4: Scale Global A global and international perspective on Danish society. How are the impulses of globalization, branding, and sustainability affecting and transforming Danish Design culture? Can the old 'master narrative' about Danish Design, shaped in the 1950s, still hold, or do we need new stories in order to grasp contemporary design culture in Denmark? This section explores Product Design, Graphic Design, and Fashion Design while emphasizing the fact that the Danish designer no longer operates solely in a domestic marketplace, but has to navigate the forces of globalization. We will get closer to these themes through our next two Symposia. Section 5: Scale Urban Focuses on Danish Design at the scale of cities, public spaces, street furniture, buildings, and detailing. Here, we will venture into the field of Urban Design. Special attention will be given to the role of daylight in architecture and to the new expectations for livability in Danish cities. We will visit current urban redevelopment projects, and our last Study Tour will be dedicated to exploring Ørestad, a satellite town with contemporary architecture and urban design. Learning objectives of the course: At the end of this course you should have the abilities to: Demonstrate an enhanced level of critical evaluation and creativity in relation to the diversity of topics, inquiries, and methods presented in the course. You should have a competent grasp on the histories, theories, and methods of Danish Design in the salient periods. Exercise effective criticism—textually, verbally, and visually—whilst engaging in and contributing positively to the intellectual life of the class. This includes demonstrating an ability to interrogate and interpret the diversity of design ideas as fielded in all lectures, readings, debates, field studies, independent assignments, and examinations. Cultivate and structure a set of valid criteria—approaches, inquiries, methodologies, etc.—upon which your studies and practices of (Danish) design may be more meaningfully grounded and articulated. Develop an awareness of different strategies of design thinking/making that are recurrent in Danish Design in order to challenge and expand one’s own design processes. Required Texts: This course contains a significant load of required readings throughout the term. Each core lecture and studentled symposia is prefaced by required readings. The texts are a combination of online materials and books on reserve in the DIS Library. The texts will be extensively discussed in the symposia in particular, so your preparation is crucial. The purpose of the discussions is to understand and question the readings, as well as use the texts to provoke deeper inquiries related to contemporary Danish Design. Required Readings: Charles Eames, "What Is Design?" (1972). Thomas Dickson, Dansk Design: English Edition, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2008. (on reserve at DIS Library) Svend Erik Møller (Ed.), Danish Design, Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1974. Dieter Rams, "Omit the Unimportant," Design Issues, 1 (1984), pp. 11113 Lars Dybdahl, "Danish Design’s DNA" (adapted from: JyllandsPosten, 12 Sept, 2014.) "The Story Of Scandinavian Design: Combining Function and Aesthetics" (article by Katrín Eyþórsdóttir) http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/the storyofscandinaviandesigncombiningfunctionandaesthetics/ Katherine E. Nelson, "The New Scandinavians," introduction to Paul Cabra & Katherine E. Nelson (eds.), New Scandinavian Design, San Francisco:Chronicle Books, 2004. Arno Victor Nielsen, "Form and Matter," Danmarks Designskole 18752000: 124 years 125 designers, 2000, pp. 5493. Kay Fisker, ‘The Moral of Functionalism’ [1947], in: Michael Asgaard Andersen (Ed.), Nordic Architects Write: A Documentary Anthology, Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2008. pp. 3439. Tobias Faber, New Danish Architecture, pp 645. Michael Asgaard Andersen, "Reciprocities: Danish Buildings in SchleswigHolstein," Architectural Research Quarterly, Vol.14(4) (2010), pp. 32739. Erik Krogh, "Space in and around the chair," Copenhagen working papers on design // 2007 // no.2. "Furniture for the Whole World," pp. 4358. (In the book Danish Design, edited by Svend Erik Møller; translation, Mogens KayLarsen, Copenhagen: Det Danske Selskab, 1974.) Kristian Berg Nielsen, “Applied Art between nostalgia and innovation,” (Chapter 2: ‘The Duplika Exhibition’, in Danish Design at the Millennium: 5 exhibitions, 5 essays), pp. 3353. Charlotte Bundgaard, “REPETITION versus MONTAGE: Prefabricated industrialized building of the 1960’s—in the light of the ‘new industrialization’.” ExPPerimenter: Craft and Experiments from PP Møbler’s workshop for 50 years. (DDC Exhibition Catalogue, 9 April – 3 June, 2003. Exhibit arranged by Hanne Kjærholm + Svend M. Hvass), pp. 315 + pp.7985. Velkommen til Planken Ud / Welcome to Walk the Plank. (Kunstindustrimuseet Exhibition Catalogue 1999), pp. 1322. Marie Riegels Melchior, Lise Skov & Fabian Faurholt Csaba, ‘Translating Fashion into Danish,’ Culture Unbound, Volume 3, 2011: 209–228. Leslie Cheek, Jr., "Foreword," in Arne Remlov (ed.), Design in Scandinavia (exhibition catalog), Oslo 1954, p. 9. Gotthard Johansson, "Design in Scandinavia," in Arne Remlov (ed.), Design in Scandinavia (exhibition catalog), Oslo 1954, pp. 1028. Claire Selkurt, "Design for a Democracy," in Widar Halén & Kerstin Wickman (eds.), Scandinavian