(1997) 'Redrawing the Geography of European Design: the Case of Transitional Countries'

Re-Drawing the Geography of European Design: the Case of Transitional Countries

Guy Julier, 1997

This paper was given at the 2nd European Academy of Design Conference, 'Contextual Design - Design in Context', Stockholm, April 1997.

Abstract

The nature and shape of Europe has changed radically in the last 20 years. This has been precipitated by a varied process of democratisation and marketisation among some Mediterrean seaboard countries followed later by the former Easter Bloc. In other words, some 460m. citizens have been much closer to Western market capitalism and liberal democracy, and its design. However, this paper argues that while Western models of design practice are influential in this new realm, these countries may also claim their own design territories. After considering some of the historiographical and ethical problems in interpreting design in transitional countries, this paper examines the interactions between ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ in design-entrepreneurial terms. It foregrounds the emergent role of the second economy and civil society in defining alternative systems for design practice. This in turn suggests a new cultural and economic geography of European design.

Introduction design and taking it very seriously. Just taking the former Eastern Bloc into account, we have The last 20 years have witnessed a seen since 1989 more than 350m. people spectacular series of political transformations drawn into new forms of market capitalism. in Europe. From the late-1970s Spain, The cityscapes of many of the cities of the Portugal and Greece began to move towards former Eastern Bloc these days starkly display liberal democracy embracing, to an extent, the symbols core Western capitalism. free market economics and aspiring to McDonald’s, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts and European integration. East European so on abound. Ikea opened its first store in countries followed ten years later. These the Eastern European in 1990 Budapest. And transitions have necessitated radical re- on one level we can not read this as a form of appraisals of national identities and outlooks corporate capitalist colonisation. After all and the wholesale reshaping of business when in 1988 applications were invited for practises and consumption patternss. While the first McDonald’s in Vaci Utca in Budapest, there may be variations in the types of hundreds of Hungarians appeared with the transition taking place, from the Western $57,000 required for the franchise licence. By perspective, these are countries which the end of 1992 there were 20 McDonald’s in represent a semi-periphery which may Hungary (Dobosiewicz 1992: 82). Clearly there interact with the Western capitalist core or was a desire to partake in the ‘rewards’ of late create their own centres. capitalism.

This paper attempts to re-site our readings of Meanwhile, it should be stressed that these design in transitional economies. There is no are still early days. The ‘shock therapy’ of doubt, in my mind, that we should be marketisation has left many of the former studying the new geography of European Soviet bloc countries reeling. High national debt and rampant inflation has left the 2

citizens of many of these countries 20% to them? Shall we expect the design poorer than they were 5 years ago. According trajectories of such transitional countries to to UNICEF figures, in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, fall into a Western pattern? Or is a new Hungary and Poland, excess mortality caused geography of European design emerging? by the ‘systemic change’ reached a staggering 800,000 between 1989 and 1993 (Andor Historiographical Problems 1995). Change without control can be a stressful experience, leading to a rise in heart In terms of design commentary, perhaps the and circulatory diseases. most well-known writer on ‘peripheral’ or ‘emergent’ countries is the Brazilian-based For designers the priority has been economic Gui Bonsiepe (1991a; 1991b). Bonsiepe has survival rather than cultural play. The design sketched out a sequence of events in the output of these countries has yet to receive development of design in developing the international designer stamps of approval countries. Much of this was based around the at the big furniture fairs—Milan and Cologne. necessary professionalization of design in But a form of design tourism for Western these countries. Obviously an important visitors is beginning to emerge, not least in aspect of this process is the way by which Prague where currently 30,000 British, design is brought into a state of self- American and Canadian ex-pats live in what consciousness via the formation of societies has been dubbed the 1920s Paris in the 1990s. and institutions, design publications and There, ex-pat café culture nestles with the exhibitions. It has to become ‘reflexive’, being architecture of Frank Ghery. But the most aware of its mechanisms and self-image (see celebrated design transition in Europe must Giddens 1991; Beck 1992 [1986]). In other be Spain’s, which in the course of 20 years has words, once it becomes visible externally and moved from being a chaotic post-dictatorship to itself, it can charge money for its creations European backwater to one of Europe’s most and thus reproduce itself. potent motors in modern furniture production and a source of inspiration for At a most straightforward level this pattern is observers of cultural regeneration through applicable to all capitalist or proto-capitalist design. countries and provides a useful starting point for design historians. But it should be treated So no longer can we smugly cling on to a with caution. His ‘sovereignty phase’ for notion of Europe as ‘the cradle of civilisation’ design in a developing country equates design (Nederveen Pieterse 1991). Design history maturity with a Western capitalist model. In cannot claim its history as the history of terms of design management, for instance, Modernism and Modernity, of Bauhaus to this reaches its apotheosis when a International Style generated from anywhere consultancy system is in place and design within 600km of Brussels, as the history of advances to vice-presidential level within a design. corporation. The aim of development is ‘catch-up’. But how can we read these transitional countries? Can we conceptualise the role of This ideology is, I believe, dominant in many design in rapidly changing social, economic, of the various Design Councils and Design cultural and political conditions? Can the Centres to be found internationally. To some various discontinuities and continuities of extent this view is perpetrated by an each country provide either a coherent local obsession (or self-obsession) of their ‘official’ or global picture? Can we reconcile the many government supported history as being the different forms of transition? Can we only history. This account is usually dominated by a reconcile them by superimposing either an story of the professionalisation of design Anglo-Saxon liberal theoretical structure or an alongside a moral crusade to convince the agressive Western capitalist interpretation on public and business of the importance of 3

design. Their propensity to reproduce each design promotion has worked for Britain— other and each other’s historiographical which it hasn’t—it’ll work for Rumania. models would inevitably suggest that any country will adopt a Western pattern of No doubt the transformation of a country’s design practice. This, I believe, is only a partial economic and cultural life provides an view. interesting and often lucrative set of business opportunities for all areas of trade and As a researcher in Spain I was constantly commerce. More specifically in design terms reminded by industrialists and designers that opportunities have been mixed. The quickest there is another history of individuals and and most vulnerable route for inward ‘design’ groups outside the structures of ‘institutional’ investment has been advertising and media design practice. The development of design communications. Multinational advertising schools, promotional bodies and publications agencies have accompanied the vast range of in the emergence of design in a liberal franchising outlets, joint ventures or fresh democracy only accounted for a part of the establishments to be formed in these new story. If we are to look for contextual design, contexts. Expenditure on advertising in then we have to go beyond Bonsiepe’s model, Hungary rose from $40m. in 1990 to an or the ‘Design Council’ model and appreciate estimated $480m. in 1993 (Clarke 1993). By the conditions of transition more thoroughly. 1994 there were over 100 listings in the There are a set of historical dynamics at work Moscow phone book for ad agencies, who beyond the basic account which treats the only handle a proportion of advertising advent of capitalism as day one and follows a accounts (MCKay and Gutterman 1994: 40). straight-line to its supposed apotheosis. The Ogilvy Group, McCann-Erickson, BBDO and Aurora are to be found in most Eastern Transition as a New Market European major cities now.

There is of course an expectation of transition These ad agencies have acted as a necessary that it is entirely about a drive towards part of the cultural logistics of market society. After all, the European Bank multinationalisation: the goods and services for Reconstruction and Development defined of international capital have to be mediated ‘transition’ as, ‘...the progression from a to their public. And in doing so, local command economy to an open market- inflections to their design language may be oriented economy’ (European Bank 1994: 4). adopted to make it recognisable and culturally Similarly, a popular unattributed definition acceptable. Thus in Hungary a form of the among Hungarian émigrés is, ‘From tanks to Century Bold Condensed typeface, historically banks’. used in Hungarian signage, is widely adopted alongside the products and images of It would seem that in design practice British multinational capital. movements into transitional countries have either been to aid that process or with the These examples are high profile, yet low cost, assumption that that process is already taking however. In design practice where capital or place. The ‘Design for Transformation’ cultural investment—or both—is higher, the programme which has been adopted by the results of design colonisation by the West Rumanian government since 1992 has several have sometimes been more problematic. British and other foreign consultants. The Residency for design consultancies in the new recommendations made by its British contexts has sometimes been short-lived. consultants are somewhat familiar: the Partnerships with host consultancies have creation of a Design Centre, a permanent sometimes been shaky. Addison’s work with space for the exhibition of ‘good design’, a Spain’s Associate Designers and the Business directory of designers and so on. In other Design Group’s partnership with Budapest’s words, the assumption is that if this form of Rubik Studio both ended acrimoniously. In 4

both instances the host consultancies view peninsular) and even more so 1989 (in the their guests as having exploited partnership case of Central and Eastern Europe) were read agreements, using their local knowledge and as the final ‘death of Modernism’. The contacts to ‘cream off’ contracts for Communist notions of state centralisation and themselves. In each case a high profile planning, productivism and standardisation national project was at stake. In Spain it was may be intrerpreted as the residue, albeit centred around the designing of the AVE high unintentional, of pioneer Modernism. speed train to run from the capital Madrid to Likewise, while the dicatorships of Franco in Seville, site of the ‘92 World Expo. Associate Spain and Salazar in Portugal embraced many Designers originally commissioned the Catalan contradictory elements, their rhetorics of poet Joan Brossa to conceive the project as an monumental authoratarianism—their mass object poem. Addison superseded Associate pageants, their mix of technocratic and Designer’s on the project in 1990. Their own spiritual idealism, their statism also smacks of solution nodded in a more European—and a similar blend of aesthetics and ideology. It possibly bland—direction. was, after all, a dissident Spanish architect, Oriol Bohigas who wrote in 1968, ‘We no In Hungary, the project which became a cause longer consider the possibility of a ‘total celebre for many Hungarian designers, was design’, neither do we believe, in accordance the Business Design Group’s re-design of the with Tomás Maldonado, in a simple addition corporate identity for the newly privatised of objects or ‘well designed’ conjunctions Magyar Posta, Hungary’s postal system. Many coming out a ‘well designed’ world, because Hungarian designers, having previously we a re now aware of the fact that this is also worked for state bureaucracies during the the method of all despotisms that often period of state socialism, were adept at large attempt to create such a world in which one scale corporate identity projects (Crowley expresses the formal order of objects and one 1992: 16). When the Business Design Group ignores, on the other hand, the disorder of took this project over questions were even men’ (Bohigas 1969: 5). raised in the Hungarian parliament in 1992 as to why a foreign multi-national had None the less it was Bohigas who activated undertaken such a high profile, national Barcelona’s plazas and parks scheme in his commission. role as Director of Urban Planning and Architecture between 1980 and 1984 for the In certain areas—large-scale corporate new socialist City Council of Barcelona. This identity, retail or exhibition work—history has intelligent attempt to restore dignity to the shown that a multinationally-based design city’s neglected public spaces was in itself practice is possible. However, a ‘clean slate’ read as the return of the ‘poetics of approach to a transitional country by a modernism’ by critics, including myself multinational design company may result (Buchanan 1986; Julier 1991). Of course this either in Euro-blandness or a patronising play was modernism on a different scale. In the to vague or superficial notions of national new democratic context, this was a identity in the visual outcome. modernism in intention at a more local scale. It was about an attitude, a desire to ‘clean up’, Transition as a New Modernism? ‘include’, ‘renovate’, ‘renew’ but at the level of the particular rather than the broad A similar ‘clean slate’ conception has been gestural. projected onto transitional countries by cultural commentators, but in different terms. A project carried out by the Mimo Studio in Both Spain and the former Soviet block Warsaw seems to carry the same inflections. countries have been subjected to a In 1990 the city authorities of Warsaw ‘Modernist gaze’. In some respects the events tendered for offers to manage the burgeoning of 1974-5 (in the case of the Iberian street markets, or in other words, the new 5

capitalism’s overflow. Mimo submitted a For example, speaking at the opening of an design for a kiosk, initially intended for fast- exhibtion of pre-1989 East German design, food outlets, but with a range of uses in mind. Hartmut Grün, a Frankfurt advertising They conceded a royalty fee on the design for executive declared: a percentage in the kiosks’ rental. Since November 1991, when the first kiosks opened ‘It seems to me that the exhibits here possess for business, they have been used to sell a totally original vitality. An unspoiled naivety. many kinds of goods from vegetables to A cigarette brand called ‘Speechless’ is simply digital watches. Although these structures miles ahead of any cigarette marketing might look crude they represent an attempt concepts we have to offer. Design punk in the to reinvigorate public space through design. GDR is much purer, more idiosyncratic and MIMO’s sheet-metal designs also reflect uncompromising than all our post-modern available technologies in Polish industry and a Memphis pieces’ (quoted in Bertsch 1990: desire to keep costs down Niwinski and 37). Stefanowki 1995). Clearly, the mental image of a country Thus design plays an important role in the emerging from decades of isolation and articulation of a new civil society. It gives backwardness (in Western terms) and taking focus to everyday life, underlines its meaning its first tentative steps in to market capitalism and restores dignity and expression to urban and liberal democracy is too capitavating to space. This in turn is a metaphor for a new ignore. Here we can access the ‘authentic’ democratic state. This concern for public object untainted by branding strategies or space and by extension, design’s influence on advanced consumer society. And let’s do it the collective consciousness, even through quick before those clever Western marketing the most simple of design gestures, should men get in there and spoil all the fun. draw the applause of die-hard Modernists. This assumes that objects produced outside Within the paradigm of architectural theory, market capitalism are somehow neutral and this interpretation makes sense. But we pure and that by extension, capitalism should not take this too far. It should be problematizes, encodes and postmodernises handled with care. It is my contention that, at them. Under market capitalism the hierarchy times, we have chosen to project a modernist of form and meaning, the distinctions sensibility onto transitional countries in order between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture implode. And to make up for the the loss of our own sense this is what automatically happens upon of a ‘modernist project’ in the West. In other marketization. words, transitional countries have become our transitional objects, to borrow from the So for instance in discussing youth psychoanalytical theorist, D.H. Winnicott. consumption in post-1989 Poland, Bohdan Winnicott developed the theory that as a child Jung a Polish sociologist argues: grows up and encounters the series of frustrations and losses within that process ‘Much to the dismay of ‘traditional’ Polish then she adopts ‘transitional objects’ onto intellectuals, under the impact of virtual which he/she can project personality, and reality and the general collapse of all therefore control (see Crozier 1994: 90-1). authority, the distinction betweeen high and The child’s teddy bear or doll is the most low culture is rapidly disappearing. Also obvious example of this. This transitional departing along with it is the traditional value object then smooths the way for change—it is system of the Polish intelligentsia, the something he can hang on to. Transitional country’s former cultural broker and role countries have been subject to the same model, for whom cultural participation, as treatment by design critics, I believe. well as intellectural and aesthetic 6

considerations of ‘being’ rather than ‘having’, Witness the radical Polish alliance, Orange was the quitessence of life’ (Jung 1995: 304). Alternative who during Martial Law ironically re-enacted the storming of the Winter Palace But, crucially, he goes on to add that: in central Wroclaw, using a bookstore as the palace and a pizza parlour as their ‘...the analogy between Poland’s nouveaux headquarters. Witness the subversion of riches and rich young consumers, who communist or national images in the poster increasingly engage in an exchange of war leading up to Hungary’s first democratic culturally mediated sign-values, in which the elections in 1990 (Bakos 1990). Witness the ‘sign’ or ‘image’ prepared by advertisers and way the Cobi mascot for the Barcelona marketers is not simply decoded along the Olympic Games of 1992 became the vehicle of lines of the advertising message, ends quickly. different commentaries on Catalan The creative interpretation and use of these nationalism (Busquet 1992). signs to construct personal aestheticized patterns of behaviour implies playful and Of course, these examples are selective and in original use of ‘signs’ to produce themselves were short-lived expressions of differentiated types of consumption patterns the politically active exploiting the and completely individualized fluid lifestyles. semiological battlefields of visual culture. But Poland’s new and young consumers are still it suggests that these locations were already busy experimenting with the formulation of laced with subversive postmodern irony. In consumption models and status symbols that material culture, the production of can be diffused and imitated... While in the alternatives to the command system may be foreseeable future, for the bulk of Polish read as subversive, but was also born of society, there is a risk that consumption will necessity. become a substitute for culture, young people are on the whole (and, in this case, Alternatives to Command Systems fortunately) far too poor to abandon their involvement in more experiential and non- In her best-selling book How we Survived material activities, which means that their Communism and Even Laughed, Serbian consumption is still a means, rather than an writer Slavenka Draculiç talks of the active end, in their lives’ (Jung 1995: 305). cottage industries throughout Eastern Europe engaged in the making and altering of clothes There may be a creeping paternalism in his (Draculic 1992: chp.3). This was a needful attitude. Clearly Jung appears more positive response to the economics of shortage about the ‘higher’ values of cultural activity fostered by the communist systems. A over passive consumption. However, he planned economy could never cater for the skilfully mediates the two extremes by variations in size and taste of its population, suggesting that young Poles are active so individuals had to carry out their own consumers, creating their own identities modifications. But it also implied an active rather than choosing them ‘off the peg’. departure from the given, from the norm of clothing as supplied by the State-planned This notion of active consumer engagement is economy. Subsequently such acts have come an inheritance of former times. In terms of to be seen as the birthplace of the new the idea of the ‘playful’ and original use of Eastern Europe. It is here, in this second signs, it is hard to find a country where in its economy, that a partnership of market pre-democratic and transitional states there economy and civil society begins. wasn’t a proliferation of linguistic irony and subversion. I am reminded of the resistant The second or informal economy differs from poetic refrain from Soweto, before the end of what we understand in the West as the black apartheid, ‘They say ‘Go Well with Shell’, We economy—in other words non-registered say ‘Throw Well with Shell’’ (Ndemwa 1990). work to avoid taxation. Under the communist 7

regimes any work carried on outside the state positions by the emergency government. It structures was effectively illegal. The major was precisely they who were internationally problem with most Soviet-bloc states was that connected—they had travelled to conferences they suffered a disproportionate emphasis in in the West. Many of them set to creating economic policy on industry and heavy small manufacturing units to make consumer industry. The corollary to this over-investment items—some copied from objects brought in industry was under-investment in services, back from their study visits—to sell on the the infrastructure and agriculture. The Polish market. Grzegorz Niwinski and Michael consequence was unfulfilled demand which Stefanowski of Mimo Studio cut their teeth as had to be met by other means. freelance designers advising on forms and packaging but also ‘making connections’ for Some of this second economy existed at, to these new entrepreneurs with suppliers, the Western observer, the insidious activity of manufacturers and the market. Indeed, the professionals such as doctors or architects Polish word kombinacja, meaning connection demanding extra gratuities from their patients or combination, holds a special connotation in or clients for their services. Some of it existed the sense of ‘business networking’. in the ‘do it yourself’ or ‘self-supply’ sector particularly in domestic construction. Some of This provided a groundbase of contacts and it took place in the private supply of food knowledge for the Mimo Studio for later through market gardening. In whichever case, years. Similarly, in Hungary interior designer this second sphere of activity existed because Miklós Vincze, like many compatriots, of shortages and inefficiency in the first undertook many interior and small-scale economy not in spite of it. It held a parasitic architectural projects for private clients relationship with the command economy, outside the official economy. These may have opposing its core values yet needing it for its been for country homes of the governmental very existence. nomenclature or for offices of urban wheeler- dealers. In whichever case, it is important to During the 1980s the second economy in the note that the major part of such work was in Eastern Bloc gained increasing significance. It supply and fitting of these projects. became officially sanctioned but unofficially Furthermore, such work acted as a major tolerated in most countries. At times, springboard for more lucrative work upon especially in Hungary, legislative steps were marketisation. In 1992, Vincze undertook taken to legally recognise such activity. For 150m. Forints (roughly $0.9m.) worth of designers, the second economy often commissions for clients such as the Berlitz provided useful and necessary work. Working Language School and the ING Dutch Bank in for the State offices or undertaking the Budapest (Peredi 1994: 5). This example is not heavily controlled and sparse freelance design atypical. Even today, of the 250 or so design work for State industries would never be studios in Hungary listed by the Design Center lucrative or satisfying. A major source of in Budapest in 1995, nearly all of them exist employment for Hungarian designers and by dint of their ‘other’ activities (Szetpeteri architects was in undertaking interior design 1995; Scherer 1995; Rubik 1995; Nagy 1995; and fitting work for private clients. After all, Ernyey 1996). Graphic design studios provide by 1989 more than half of domestic print services, product designer provide small- construction was taking place in the second scale manufacturing, packaging, advertising economy (Swain 1992: 169). services, interior designers do the supplying and fitting. An engaging example of this process is given in the curriculum vitae of Warsaw’s Mimo The history of design in the West has tended Studio. In Poland during Martial Law many towards increased division of labour in design professionals such as lawyers, doctors and whereby design entrepreneurs who design university lecturers were forced out of their and manufacture, such as James Dyson, are 8

celebrated exceptions to the rule. I contend fact that in 1993 an estimated 47,000 that transitional countries give rise to an Hungarian business were still waiting for a historically formed, closer interface between telephone connection (Ettlie 1993: 34). designer and producer. Core and Periphery Interactions To some degree the experience of Spain mirrors this. An impressive array of well- To return to the symbols of hard-core known Spanish design-led companies were Western capitalism—fast-food—this dynamic founded in the latter years of the Francoist may be spelt out more clearly. Mimo’s street regime and the early years of the transition by kiosk, mentioned earlier, was designed to designers. These include B.D. Ediciones de foster small-scale entrepreneurialism. They Diseño, Punt Mobles, Disform and Mobles became home to a burgeoning fast-food 114. In nearly all these cases, they were industry in the 1990s. These weren’t just founded as a response to a market situation: imitations of McDonald’s and KFC, but that a luxury market for ‘high design’ furniture Vietnamese and Polish versions of fast-food. existed but was not catered for by a command Likewise, the growth of franchised burger- economy held down by import tarifs and a bars in Spain has given rise to more locally- cumbersome state holding company. Thus a specific forms of fast-food such as Pan y network was formed to design for and supply Company. Designed by Barcelona graphics this market which partially existed outside the studio Summa, this chain drew on the ‘official’ system, exploiting a depleted yet traditional Spanish mid-morning bar-snack of extant small-workshop system available in the bocadillo and turned it into a novel chain Spain’s industrial centres of Barcelona and of localised fast-food. We have yet see the Valencia. Hungarian langos—a cheese and garlic filled breadcake—to be re-marketed by Budapest To the casual Western observer in Spain of entrepreneurs, but time will tell... the late-1970s or Eastern Europe of the early 1990s the logotypes of McDonald’s, IBM and Clearly this is a question of scale and where the international banks seem to starkly you look. At other levels the price of progress dominate the cityscape. This may seem like has been a loss of particularity. In his book on the visual evidence of the Brazilian television, transition and regionalism in Spain, development economist Florestan Ferdandes’ Richard Maxwell tracks the clear shift from declaration that, ‘...the history of capitalism, the national network, dominated from in our times, reveals itself more clearly in the Madrid, under Francoism, to a regionalised periphery than in the center’ (Fernandes system to cater for the increasingly pluralistic 1979: xii). However this is only a half-truth. nature of democratic Spain. Spanish television They dominate only because little else does. was formerly dominated by football, Behind these brash symbols of Western bullfighting and Sevillanas musicals, to make capitalism is an economy made up of up the so-called ‘culture of evasion’ networks of small businesses which make up a encouraged by the late-Francoist regime. vital and difficult to penetrate indigenous Given the high costs of television production, economy (Economist 1991). For instance, he argues, the regions were unable to according to a World Bank study, the inflow of produce an optimum amount of its own foreign capital into developing East European television, but instead had to rely largely on countries in the early days of marketisation the dubbing of ‘international’ television into was a catalyst to but not a major cause of regional languages (Maxwell 1995: 147). Thus business development—commercial growth we may watch EastEnders in Catalan, and its capitalisation was more localised than Neighbours in Galician, Baywatch in Basque. had been anticipated. And an indicator of the For most of the day, the only regional aspect gap between small-business growth and large- to the one-eyed monster in the living-room scale business infrastructural provision is the corner is its language. And the same could be 9

said for television in Eastern Europe, these more nationally specific form of civil society. A days. value system around ‘Nation, God and the Family’ was seen to be invested in rural The inference, here, is that in their quest for Hungary. This view was paralleled in the re-packaging of cultural production, Hungarian politics with the emergence of the transitional nations trade in particularity for Smallholders’ Party and some elements of the novelty. The media systems of both Spain and Hungarian Democratic Forum. While I firmly Hungary were among the first national assets believe that it was not their intention, to be bought up by the multi-nationals of the practitioners of the Hungarian school of ubiquitous Rupert Murdoch, Axel Springer or organic architecture have been appropriated Robert Maxwell. They are, after all, a quick as the visual torchbearers of this attitude. The route to their lucrative advertising markets rural community centres, churches and dance (Economist 1991). It follows, therefore, that halls designed by Imre Makovecz, Gyšrgy they should rapidly ‘click in’ to international Csete or Dezü Ekler were convenient signs of television’s form and content. Obviously, the this revival National Romanticism for the core of capitalism is being reproduced rather political activists. than reconfigured here. In Catalonia, and to a lesser extent in Spain’s Meanwhile, the above fast-food examples other thirteen regions, this reconfiguration of from Poland and Spain demonstrate that a citizenship and nationhood has been further localised reconfiguration is possible and that reaching. Design has played a far more active designers can play a strategic role in that role in this process than we shall ever see in process. Likewise, localised forms of design- any of the core Western European countries. entrepreneurialism have emerged from various forms of the ‘second economy’ in We have already seen how the Bohigas years transitional countries. in Barcelona re-established public spaces as the site of the new democracy. The streets New Models for Citizenship weren’t just reclaimed—they were re- and Nationhood through Design? designed. But this project has continued. In the second instance, the lavish project of It would be nice to report that design was urban renewal not only conspired with other playing a role in reconfiguring notions of cultural initiatives around Catalan nationhood citizenship and nationhood which evaded (disseny (Catalan) not diseño (Castilian) or Western models. Social and political scientists design (International)), but conversely in discussing transitional countries, often positioned Barcelona as a nation-state within invoke the notion of a ‘Third Way’ for such Europe. The Olympic preparations were countries: in other words, ‘neither fundamental in this process. Subsequently, Washington nor Moscow’ but something design has played a role in the repackaging of else... In Poland the Solidarity movement may Barcelona as the environmentalist nation- be read as an attempt to build a civil society state. without private ownership, to rebuild citizenship without entrepreneurship. Ten Conclusion years later little remains of that vision. If we are to re-draw the geography of In Hungary the rural embourgeoisement European design then it should have the created by the entrepreneurial development following salient features. of agriculture outside the state sector has also been invoked as ‘Third Way’ (see Szelenyi To view countries drawn into Western liberal 1991). During the 1980s it was hoped by some democracy and market capitalism as ‘clean Hungarian social and political scientists that slates’ is erroneous. Just because they may, to this (re)-emergent class would establish a the Western eye, look undesigned as 10

countries it doesn’t mean to say that they are improve the relative position of a given ahistorical in design terms. They all have their economy. He argues that such an opportunity own design histories, sometimes little was missed when the Czech car-manufacturer understood and appreciated in the West. And Skoda and the Hungarian electrical the rupture of rapid economic and political components company Tungsram were sold to change does not make these histories the first foreign buyer, who happened to be redundant. Consumers, producers and rivals (Andor 1995). (The same can be said for designers in transitional countries have Spain’s SEAT.) Andor goes on to observe that invariably turned their experience of history globally there have been two sources of to surprising and unusual results. We have success in football so far: wealth and poverty. seen this in the notion of active consumption A wealthy state can support football training (as in the case of Jung’s analysis of Polish through lavish facilities (best example: the youth consumption) in which identity is Netherlands). In a poor state, kids have no explored perhaps more consciously than we other life perspective but becoming perfect in give credit for. We have seen how this ties in handling the ball (best example: Brazil). Semi- with a vibrant commercial system derived peripheral countries, such as Hungary, may from the second economy and which existed fall into the second category. This concept before transition. The second economy also might be extended from football to design. provided a training ground and networking field for subsequent design Design’s ability to intercede between the entrepreneurialism. It might be said that the micro- and the macro-, to approach global command economy of state socialism has problems at a local and low-cost level means now been replaced by that of multinational that each design act is laced with significance. corporate capitalism (McDonald’s). The ‘halo’ It makes the relationship between effect of complementing or competing small- intervention and context visible. As a reflexive scale commercial ventures has emerged, in practice it draws meaning into consciousness. which, design has played a role (Pan y Thus, for instance, the new market kiosk Company). becomes a metaphor for the new market, the street market becomes a metaphor for an Meanwhile, Western design consultancies active civil society. have only been marginally successful in penetrating these new markets. At times they Transition doesn’t mean wholesale have touched some raw nerves in their transformation. The material and cultural handling of specific high-profile projects (AVE conditions of transition create a delicate and Magyar Posta). The major problem, buffer zone between core and periphery though, has been in understanding and within which different and differing aesthetic participating in the tight network of contacts, and productive models can be forged. This production and supply systems. permits the partial emergence of some alternative and localised models for design With regard to a broader cultural and practice. The geography of European design is economic map, most of Europe’s transitional therefore too varied to be drawn by countries have emerged into a semi- colonialists, imperialists or flat-earthers. peripheral status, falling between core and periphery. Neither can they control their economic destiny with the same certainty as Germany or France, but they are in better shape than, say, the Balkans or the CIS. Hungarian economist László Andor observes that the point is not the cluster you put yourself into ex post, but whether you can take advantage of certain opportunities to 11

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