New Talent: Berlin Claims its Stake
The Designmai Youngsters (DMY) exhibition in Berlin impressed with unconventional designs from creative newcomers from all over the world. The exhibition took place in an empty building made of brick that was accentuated with splashes of color on the DMY posters. Usually the building is used for concerts; now it created the perfect atmosphere for a New Talents exhibition.
Many trends could be discovered at the show, such as the theme of transience, concerning memories, impressions and journeys. S.Wert Design depicted this by producing textiles with prints of different cities. One can find, within the designs, the streets of Tokyo, as well as the Swiss Alps, and the city of Brussels, where the designers added the Atomium building that represents a molecule and which was originally build for the World Fair in 1958. Today, traveling is made easy with inexpensive flights, and through the age of digital cameras, printed photographs have lost their value. Through the textiles with landscapes, such as the New York skyline, people are able to carry their experiences, not only on their body, but more importantly, in their minds.
Another trend that could be followed was that of political statements. OH! Logo showed this through their clothing line ‘Do not wear’. In a time where brands and logos become more important than quality, OH! Logo, takes well-known brands and turns them around, such as an up-side-down Adidas logo, a flipped around Che Guevara, and Mickey Mouse without eyes. This makes an important statement concerning the Anti-Brand movement; especially for the youth, brands seem to be increasingly important, and the designers give their opinion and send out a personal message about the unimportance of logos.
Eric Morel made a statement with his lamp that questions the limits of design, as many designs can be overdone and do not follow real purposes anymore, just like the exaggerated metal strap he attached to an old-fashioned lamp, which is not handy at all.
In addition, another designer, took one of the most sacred symbols, the Crucifix, hung it on a wall, and used it as a hanger for clothing. This depicts another theme important to youth, as religion is losing its importance and its value in today’s society. Religious figures, such as Buddha, and in this case, Jesus, are merely used for decoration or as cult objects, without meaning and values behind them.
Onto the theme of multi-culturalism; Morphorm by Martin Schatz combined the Chinese and German cultures into one object; a fortune cookie made of porcelain and printed with floral motifs. In China, the fortune cookie brings luck, and in Germany, broken shards do; therefore, combining the two gives a double dose of luck.
Yet another trend is that of war. Christoph Krönke created the series paddle skin composed of game consoles made of latex. The consoles are connected to either soldiers or weapons, illustrating the problem of brutality in today’s computer games. Ego shooter games have become some of the most popular games, and games have lost their original value and purpose of amusing people. Games are mainly about crime and war. The same negative image is portrayed in the work of Retired guns, as an inflatable tank in original size, out of which’s cannon pipe, pink flowers are growing. Their message is the same as, Christoph Krönkes; they want to send a message against war and want to promote peace in the world.
In contrast to Christoph Krönkes game consoles, ‘id-entity’, reverts back to simple games like Fussball. Franziska Paulik and Maichael Wanger created the Natur-Kick, a fussball table that takes the players back to nature. The field consists of natural elements in three different versions: real grass, desert sand, and water, while the figures are made of birch, leather and rubber. The concept of this table is to take users back to the original purpose of games, show them something unexpected, and simply make them laugh.
Furthermore, designers also focused on readapting and recycling. For example, one could find a car top that was cut off and transformed into a table. In addition, designers used old furniture and redesigned it by taking white tape, marking it with black marker, and wrapping it around the furniture afterwards. Another designer group, Formfjord, found a way to readapt old coffee table sets from their grandmothers. They took the saucer and reused it either as wall decoration, or as soap dishes.
The design group moebln did not necessarily recycle old designs, but they created their own way of dealing with old objects, by creating a lamp, made up of a broken light bulb. Farsen & Schöllhammer used the same idea and created a shelf that appears to be cracked from the top down to the bottom. Hence, the youngsters both recycled old products, and faked the state of the products to be broken.
Another major trend was the use of digital media. Markus and Kirstin Becker designed the series Personal Codes in order to show fragmented personality profiles in digital space. They took a portrait of a woman and changed this portrait by means of digital techniques to become an absolute abstraction of the person’s real picture. This is intriguing, since digital tools tend to morph people, such as retouching in magazines, and in general with the Digital and Computer Age everything becomes more impersonal and abstract, a perfect connection to the series Personal Codes. One more digital project is Limonka, which is concerned with integrating flat screens into our daily life. When TV is not in use, the designer created a living picture, which turns the screen into a frame.
There were also many surreal designs that surprised with extreme innovativeness and extravagance. One of these designs is the lamp Serpentine, created by Sickinger/ Feltz & studiohausen. The lamp appears like a regular lamp at the first glance, but it turns out that it ‘lies down’ at some point during the night to signal the person using it that it is time to go to sleep.
Another unique approach is Roland Graf’s table, which is composed of seven wooden planks that can be assembled without glue and nails just by pushing the pieces together. This also connects to the theme of space and organization, which is getting more and more important in today’s interior design, as the table can be put away and assembled easily. The coffee-table “sixty9” by Fil-Quadrat and Liran Levi follows the same concept of organization, as its two components are flexible and can be moved as necessary, acting both as a table and a storage space for books, magazines...
More unconventional furniture was produced by Onsite Studio in form of the series ‘OS 08- Programmatic furniture’ which are sofas assembled with long tubes, forming dynamic furniture that provides an entirely new sitting experience.
After all, the DMY was a great success, concerning the space and atmosphere of the show, but mainly with its innovative designs, that yet again proved the creativity of the youngsters, as well as their critical approach to different themes and trends.
—Katharina Stauffenberg
