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原文：
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Update:2009-12-08
Justin
0'Connor
Source: No.199 | November2009
[…]
The basic difference between a creative artist and an industrial designer lies in
the tasks they perform
and the environment in which they operate. The
creative artist is
respon-sible only to
himself. On the work of the designer, however,
depends the
commercial profit of his
factory, and thus the welfare of the workers in
this factory. His
world is the world
of businessmen and technicians.
His language must be the language of businessmen
and
technicians. Artistic arguments are
not subject to proof. The artist is allowed to
dream. The
designer must be awake at
every minute of his working day. He is a manager.
Objectivity
and clear thinking
determine his actions. He must make all his
dispositions with a sure
hand. The
artist works alone. The designer is a member of a
team. The artist is silent. The
designer needs to talk about his ideas.
He must be able to communicate with his partners.
[…]
[…]
We must say goodbye to the familiar image of the artist in industry who,
dreaming of good design, tinkers round
with his spoon, the last craft worker in industry,
as
he was once called. We shall have to
accustom ourselves to a new type of designer, one
who is hard-ly to be distinguished from
a clever manager
–
the word ?manager? being
meant in a positive
sense here. It is natural for this designer to be
as familiar with
questions of
production and sales as his client is. Design
alone is nowadays only a part of
his
work. […] The industrial desi
gner of today must be put in much greater touch with the
values of commerce and mar-keting if he
is to be successful in his work, if he is to
conceive
the right product for the
right market at the right time.
Industrial design is the
creation of industrial products. The industrial
designer must
have the knowledge, the
abilities and the experience needed to grasp the
facts governing
the pro-duct, to
conceive the design, and to carry it out in
collaboration with all those
involved
in product planning,
development and manufacture, up to the finished
product. In his
coor-dinating design
activity he will benefit from his knowledge of the
sciences and of
technology as a basis.
The aim of his work is to create industrial
products to serve society
in both a
cultural and social aspect.
The
industrial designer is the advocate of the people.
It is amazing that the user or
con-
sumer is only indirectly involved in the decision
process governing things he requires
to
satisfy his needs. So, in the first place, the
desig
ner is the user’s or consumer’s advocate.
But at the same time this
makes him a product of the people. Everyone has
his own
yardstick. Everyone makes their
own decision. The particular task of the designer
is to
anticipate the de-cisions which
others will
make in the future as if they were his own. […]
The difference from
previous occupational descriptions [of the
industrial designer
–
Editor’s
note] is this
–
that German designers speak of coordinated design work and include the
social aspect to which industrial
design must be subject. I do not believe that this
occupational description will be the
last one. This profession, which is constantly
involved
in a dynamic devel-opment, is
seeking new fields of work and new orientations.
This service, from designs by Sigrid
and Günter Kupetz, is not without its charms.
Excellently finished ebony handles, a
straight upper camber with a flat cover and
counter-sunk ebony handle, a rather
higher three-cor-nered spout (useful when carrying
full pots) and an idiosyncratically
curved body. One would perhaps enjoy it without
reservation if there were not already
an ?m? service. But
it provides enjoyment enough. For
whether this careful transfer of a ?stile
cristallino?
to silver really signifies
the ultimate solution, or just an attractive
preliminary stage
–
the
fact remains that WMF has been honestly
en-gaged in producing something genuine,
some-thing of high quality.
This monograph is the first
comprehensive overview of the creative work of
designer
Günter Kupetz. At the same
time it presents a picture of the development of
industrial
design in Germany. There are
few other personalities in the design world whose
profession-
al career reflects as well as Kupetz’s does, the sense of being one of the
founders of a disci-pline in the
fifties and sixties of the twentieth century.
Against the
background of the
completely changed social and economic contexts of
that time, Kupetz
and, with him a whole
generation of young German designers, frees
himself from the
artisanal image of the
industrial artist imposed by the Bauhaus
tradition, enters into an
international
dialogue about contemporary industrial design and
ends up by creating the
profession of
industrial designer in Germany.
Even though Kupetz’s debut was as an
artist. Bernhard Heiliger’s outstanding student
de-cided, after his first successes in
sculpture, to take up a position with WMF in
Geislingen/ Steige. He became head of
the design studio and in subsequent years created
hundreds of products for the various
branches of the company. These products have also
found high international acclaim.
Kupetz was represented by pieces at the World
Exhibition
in Brussels and at the
?Triennale 1957? in Milan and, equally, some of
his designs have
found their way into
the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New
York.
Kupetz’s organic,
sculptural forms developed from his work as a
sculptor find an echo
in contemporary
taste. They represent an optimistic modernity
oriented towards the future,
a
modernity which became ever more popular during
those years and which, with
increasing
affluence, more and more people were able to
afford. Against the background
of his
paid work in industry, Kupetz’s wish to set his
work in some sort of context and to
give it the status of an independent
professional discipline began to crystallise. He
was
increasingly re-occupied by issues
surrounding the nature of the job and the
professional
ethics of the designer. He
became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund
association of
artists and sought
contacts with national and international
colleagues. Influenced by the
first
International Design Congress, organised by the
German Design Council in 1957 and
the
British designer Sir Paul Reilly, Kupetz became in
1959 one of the co-founders of the
Association of German Industrial
Designers (VDID) the first professional
association for
industrial designers.
It was no more than
consistent that the professional occupation of
industrial
designer as he had
experienced it should lead him into fully
freelance work in 1960 and
finally, in
1962, into teaching. Thus, in taking over the
newly founded teaching department
of
Industrial Design at the Kassel School of
Industrial Art, he saw an opportunity to bring
this new pro-fessional occupation into
the purview of teaching and to test it in
practice.
The more
important teaching was to him, the more Kupetz
realised the dilemma in
which he was
placed. He knew the importance of technical,
economic and social influences
on the
design process and wanted to integrate the
sciences into design training as auxiliary
disciplines. At the same time, he
rejected any approach to the design process which
was
overly scientific. Kupetz therefore
used the architectural term of (design) planning,
a
process in which of course scientific
knowledge had an influence on design, but without
dominating it. On the other hand
–
in contradistinction to the Ulm school
–
he considered
the artistic
aspect of design to be important. Here in his publications he made use of an enabling
for-mulation by which, instead of art,
he introduced the concept of intuition into his
ideas
of teaching. It was intuition, he
said, which distinguished the designer from the
engineer.
Increasingly his
interests were no longer restricted to training
students. In his
opinion, neither the
industrial-art schools of his time nor the
polytechnics of fine art were
adequately structured for design
training in Germany. He devoted himself to an
evaluation
of the school of industrial
art, which led in 1971 to the foundation of the
Polytechnic of Art
and Design. In 1973
he was appointed to the Polytechnic of the Fine
Arts in Berlin, where
he became
Professor of Product Design and Product Planning.
The reorganisation of the
Polytechnic
of the Arts in Berlin saw Kupetz as a member of
the Organising Commission
where he
attempted to bring his ideas to bear on the
organisation of the Industrial Design
Department. In his inaugural lecture as
professor in Berlin Kupetz was already summing up
in surprising fashion the job
definition which he had proposed only a few years
before:
?The difference from previous
occupational descriptions is this: German
designers speak
of coordinated design
work and include the social aspect to which
industrial design must
be
subject. I do not believe that this occupational
description will be the last one.
This
pro-fession, which is constantly involved in a
dynamic development, is seeking new
fields of work and new orientations.?
What distinguished Kupetz from his colleagues was
his ability to question his own actions
and to recognise that there were ever more
possibilities of reaching solutions in
design
–
and against a background of social change.
For those
seeking to classify Kupetz’s creative work, it is
the mass market, where what
matters
first and foremost is meeting basic consumer needs
(furniture, utensils and items
for everyday use) which provided the
initial social context for his endeavour. Even
before he had finished his creative
career in industry this context had changed
radically.
From the beginning of the
1970s the German market begins to diversify. In a
saturated
market, new consumer needs
come to the fore. Representation, involvement,
identification,
hedonism now form the
central concerns of design led by market needs.
Kupetz designed well over
1.000 products. These included metal-ware, glass,
jewellery, packaging, furniture,
durables and machinery. Some of his designs, such
as the
mineral water bottle for the
German spring-water company, for which he was
awarded the
Federal Prize for Good
Design in 1982, became best-sellers a million
times over and are still
in
use today. Other pieces, like many of
the containers he designed for WMF or the first
key-pad Telefone for AEG Telefunken
were real design innovations in their field. The
all-em-bracing and multilayere
d way in which Günter Kupetz’s work has developed, is, at
the same time, only conceivable
in an industrial context. What characterises his
output is
his percep-tion that the
design of anonymous products for the mass market
is a socially
important task, which
must be accomplished with the highest possible
regard to quality.
?The
professional responsibility of the designer is a
personal responsibility to society,
which he intends to serve through his
work. His work for industry is therefore bound to
a
continual further development of his
knowledge and abilities, but to an ever watchful
moral
receptivity too. In particular he
must gain a comprehensive view of the whole life
of man
and be familiar with its needs,
its customs and its desires. He should recognise
the
im-portance of his task. Looked at
in this way, he is the vehicle of values both
ideal and
con-crete?, wrote Kupetz in
1963. With the dissolution of a mass market
determined by
basic
human consumer needs, Kupetz lost the
context which shaped his work. He did not
regret this, but recognised that his
conception of industrial design is today a
historical one.
The fact that,
notwithstanding this, many of his designs still
seem contemporary today is
attrib-
utable to their outstanding formal qualities.
The challenge of publishing
a book on the work of one's own father has its
appeal,
though it is not without
difficulties as one approaches the task. Many of
the things that one
knew intimately -
and which one therefore never needed to classify -
have to be looked at
again from a
distance. This is not only a question of gaining a
certain academic objectivity,
but one
has also to rekindle an enthusiasm for things that
have become a well-known part
of one's
everyday life. This is not a job that one could
risk undertaking alone.
I
am, therefore, most grateful to Stephan Ott, who,
with conceptual creativity, great
love
of, and attention to detail have worked with me to
make this book possible.
Annemarie
Jaeggi and Florian Hufnagl as well as Marcus
Botsch have set out the context of
Günter Kupetz’s work in their
remarkable and indeed brilliant contributions. In
his
photographs, Ingmar Kurth has lent
a cool poetry to Günter Kupetz’s designs and
transposed them into the 21st century.
Armin Illion has taken his inspiration from the
sculptural character of Kupetz design
and created corresponding and equally exciting
graphics.
My
thanks to all friends, collaborators and
colleagues for their many comments and
good wishes, and to WMF AG, the GDB eG
(Registered Association of German
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