Panel discussion photo: Cassandra Peters © rams foundation
Dieter Rams Forum
In addition to the magazine on the website, the foundation has also organised a public discussion format at Frankfurt’s Museum Angewandte Kunst since 2023. The aim is to discuss current issues relating to industrial design from various perspectives. To date, there has been no forum of this kind in existence in Germany. These live events are recorded and can be accessed later via the website.
Qualified journalism for industrial design is rare nowadays in Germany. Some of the former print media ‘design report’ and ‘form’ have been discontinued for years. Vacant positions for specialised journalists in daily newspapers have not been filled. Today, design takes place predominantly in fashion and interior magazines. And it is precisely there that the concept of design is reduced to a superficial distinguishing feature. Not only has the term ‘design’ become inflated (13.8 billion entries on Google), but it has also become a popular and arbitrary marketing accelerator. The rams foundation wants to counter this with substantial discourse that puts the focus on responsible design.
The foundation is still guided by the words of Bauhaus master Laszlo Moholy-Nagy from 1929: ‘The goal is not the object, but the human being.’ Today, however, it should be added that design is not only about the well-being of people, but above all about the well-being of our planet. Dieter Rams first emphasised the ecological responsibility of design as early as four decades ago.
More Contributions
10 Principles for Good Design
I expressed in ten principles the basic considerations that determine my work as a designer, and which represent the main features of my design philosophy.
A look back and ahead
The exhibition provides an overview of Dieter Rams’ design work with photographs, design sketches and explanatory texts. It shows important works from the designer’s catalogue raisonné published in 2020 by the Phaidon publishing house in London for Braun, Vitsœ, fsb, Gillette and other companies. Among them are rarely shown, unrealised designs.
The Hamburg Years
A major chapter in the life of Dieter Rams about which little is known so far is that he was a professor of industrial design at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg from 1981 to 1997. In search of traces.
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