New types of materials have always inspired design and led to new products. Even more when they were proven to be as flexible and universally applicable as plastics in their different variants. It is no coincidence that people talk about plastics having brought about more democratisation in the world of things. The fact is that because plastics are suitable substitutes for traditional materials, they are often cheap starting material for mass-produced products. This is mainly because plastics can be moulded into any shape, drawn and inflated, and given any colour imaginable. And so they have been triumphal in the consumer goods sector since the 1970s at the latest.
The Ulm School of Design (HfG), which existed from 1953 to 1968, saw itself as part of an emancipatory modernity. With the help of science and technology, its members wanted to design the everyday environment sustainably and well in order to participate in the establishment of a better world. Accordingly, there was a lot of experimentation in the workshops of the university. Initial designs and models were created in the plaster, wood and metal workshops. Although a plastics workshop was planned, it was not set up until the summer of 1959: “The smallest room in terms of square metres, the members of the product design and construction departments used it particularly intensively: the new material was suitable for model building and was at the same time a promise for the design of future industrial products. Companies like Bayer and BASF provided generous donations of materials so that the young designers got to know and appreciate the material.”
Much has changed since the post-war years, which were austere but marked by the euphoria of the dawn of a new era. Plastics have long been talked about and have become a serious problem for the environment. The special exhibition “Plastic Materials – Magic Material: Freedom and Limits of Design” in the HfG Archive Ulm from 17 June to 7 January 2024 raises the question “about the opportunities and limits of an almost total freedom of design, as given to us by modern plastics, and in doing so addresses the responsibility of designers, scientists and consumers alike in the face of these seemingly unlimited possibilities”. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by avedition (softcover, 128 p., numerous illustrations, 24 euros).
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