Discuss design! - Part 1

Tuesday January 16, 2007, 8 p.m.
Thomas Wagner (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) in conversation with Konstantin Grcic (Konstantin Grcic Industrial Design, Munich) and Thomas Ingenlath (Director Design and general manager, Volkswagen Design Center, Potsdam)


Adding constant value:
Design as a process or how objects are infused with culture

In design, the term "process" has become common parlance to describe a whole package of more or less regulated activities, at the end of which a product pops out. Usually, no light is shed on what influences and determines the respective actions. If a chair, a table or a car is developed, there are decisions taken relating not only to the shape, but also to the materials, the production mode, ecological and energy efficiency, marque identity and target group. Alongside its material face, each product also possesses a cultural identity, and each detail plays a part in determining at the end of the day what culture the product represents.

Konstantin Grcic is a designer, whose work takes its cue from the logic of use. It is not unusual for his objects to reveal their structural properties or the process that gave rise to them. And Thomas Ingenlath, who among other things designed the new Skoda Octavia and the Skoda Roomster, which has just been presented to the public, is one of the few car designers who develops spatial concepts out of an awareness of a marque's tradition in such a way as to combine new ideas with sound user-friendliness.

One intention behind the discussion with Konstantin Grcic and Thomas Ingenlath is to establish according to what criteria decisions are taken during the design process, what role historical models, aesthetic and cultural preferences/influences play, and whether the notion of "process" possibly conceals a joyful and yet serious approach to the symbolic added value of culture.