Aim carefully

Is Nordic design in a stronger position now than it was a year ago? Nope. What was understandable then is pure atomic physics today.

On New Year’s Eve, when you’re letting fly the champagne corks, try accidentally to aim at one of those irritating design workers. You can’t miss in fact, they’re everywhere. Selling design today is as popular as it once was to paint flowers on your navel and surf in mud – straining your guts in the cause of world peace. And design is a great deal nobler than flowers and mud. You and I may see design as something beautiful or fun or thought provoking, but for the design workers it’s a matter of something eminently… loyal and supportive – and noble. Design is there to help industry, to assist the weak and ailing, to help our children. One can only wish that design could help design workers get back to earth.
Not anyone can become a design worker, only those who never give a selfish thought to themselves. That’s how they present themselves. Through their loud proclaiming that design can be the cure for all that’s bad they manifest their own goodness. Still more important, they declare themselves members of an elitist club of their own forming in which everyone is quite fearfully committed. And people who are quite fearfully committed are naturally superior to us who don’t commit ourselves more than we have to. A polar-
isation has taken place and the distance between designer and consumer has grown with the pass-ing of the year. Which was hardly the intention when our politicians brainstormed this Nordic investment in design. They wanted merely to practise a little good old adult education. Sweden’s minister of culture went so far as to describe design as a »democratic right« and it was decided that Swedes were to be »world’s best at consuming design«. Put that in film terms and you see at once how primitive an idea it was: sack Schwarzenegger and Spiderman and
Dumb & Dumber in favour of Tarkovsky and Kieslowski and smart and smarter. If only the
equation were as simple as that – that »good taste« really was hindered by »bad taste«, when the reality is that they stand and fall together. The worst sort of carpet salesman with his gold necklace and Ferrari contributes as much to design as any stylish little fashion boutique. And Ingvar Kamprad, this hate item number one for the design elite, contributes most of all. On every crown his stores earn a good many pennies go straight to the state coffers. It is those petty pennies that support design.
And health treatment and care.
Is Nordic design in a stronger position now after a year of all kinds of design events? Nope. First of all, when this year is over we shan’t want to hear mention of design for a long, long while
to come. At one point I believed that the design workers’ strategy consisted of just this form of exhaustion – in Sweden alone some 2000 exhibitions and seminars and do-it-yourself exercises have been held this year. No quality control, a free-for-all to come and play.
And secondly, what back in January was a concept which everyone thought they understood has now turned into the equivalent of atomic physics. What is design actually? No one knows for sure, not even the design workers themselves who have packed the term so full of mystical socio-political connotations that they have long ago forgotten their democratising commitment. Instead of bringing design into the general domain they have alienated their public. The vision of democratising design has collapsed like a deckchair beneath them. We can only hope they aren’t smart enough to work out how to put the thing up again.
It is still too early to diagnose the damage that the year has brought to Nordic design health. But it is easy to guess at it. Architecture was in the same situation following 1968. At that time architects were regarded as irresponsible types serving the dictates of the upper class. Result: a new generation of architects wanted to do anything except architecture. If some poor chap commissioned a villa he got an unpainted concrete box and that was that. It is only now, more than 30 years later, that this anxious attitude has relaxed up here in the north. The Jewish Museum in Copenhagen (Forum 3.04), Turning Torso (reviewed on page 160 of this issue) and Ordrupgaard (page 44) – in just 15 months we have had three very expressive pieces of architecture. Another jewel, less advertised, is the Svalbard research park by Jarmund/Vigsnæs (page 126) – architecture
shaped by the climatic conditions of our region.
To claim that the effect of the design year will be as disastrous as the 1968 movement would of course be to overrate its significance. But I should be greatly surprised if the sanctimonious efforts of the design workers didn’t put an end to design development for at least a few years on.
Perhaps someone wonders why he should aim his champagne cork at a design worker – after all, the year is surely over? Don’t even think it! In line with all the woolly argumentation they have fed us with during this year the design workers have now decided that the Design Year was just the start.
So aim carefully.

Mark Isitt
Chefredaktör
mark.isitt@provisa.se