Design Finding Mission Moscow Introduction

As part of a one-month research residency by Pro Helvetia in March 2019, I had the opportunity to go on a search for contemporary Russian design in Moscow.

As a designer and curator, my main motivation for a studio residency in Moscow was to research the correlations between social and political system and creative output, to filter out the real challenges and opportunities for the design discipline and to create distance from daily business. Russia as a fast developing, consumption-oriented and powerful country with a long and important history seems a perfect place for this investigation. 

ARTICLES ON HOCHPARTERRE (German)
Design Finding Mission Teil 1
Design Finding Mission Teil 2
Design Finding Mission Teil 3

BACKGROUND
Richard Nixon challenged Nikita Khruschev at the infamous Kitchen Debate in 1959 with the question: „Would it not be better to compete in the relative merit of washing machines than in the strength of rockets?“ It has become a kind of truism that washing machines – and fridges, Tupperware, cars and electric guitars – are what won the cold war.

Does design and product culture have an influence on politics or vice versa? Does the political system influence the taste or the form? Is form a means of propaganda? We all know about censorship in arts. But what about design? Has product design, fashion or graphics been a theme of propaganda? Or has it only been influenced by the possibility of production?

The avant-garde in European Design can be found in the northern countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands. All countries with highly advanced social standards. Is this just by coincidence?

What about Russia? The capitalism is relatively young, the political system close to a dictatorship, consumption goes over social responsibility? Are these clichés true? And what are the influences on design and product culture?

The exibition „Discovering Utopia: Lost Archives of Soviet Design of the Russian Federation“ at the London Design Biennale 2016 showed a large overview of Sowiet Style and Design and many unrealized projects. In the early 1960s Soviet leadership started to pay attention to design development. In the 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the state system of design collapsed. 

The architect Yury Grigoryan said in an interview with the online magazine dezeen: „Russia is only developing. It‘s like 25 years of a new era of Russian architecture. We are on the edge of this new tradition in Russia.“

What about the new Russian design language? And does national style exist anyhow in this day and age of digitalization and globalization?