Norm=Form Essen

Norm = Form

An exhibition about design
and standardisation
28 August - 19 October 2010
Halle V, Zeche Zollverein, Essen

Our shoes, our clothes, our bicycle, our kitchen drawers, our coffee cup, our computer program, the sheets of paper from the printer – each and every one of these objects are standardized. Although all our choices in life appear individual choices, never before so many products have been copies of one and the same thing. And they’d better be, since a pair of jeans would be prohibitively expensive if it would have to be tailor made, over and over again. Besides, in the store we would get quite confused if we happened to forget our size. Thanks to a myriad of mutual agreements, nuts and bolts match, a dish washer will fit in the kitchen and a digital song reaches the other side of the world. Throughout the 20th Century, it is these advantages that have inspired designers such as Dieter Rams and Piet Zwart, as well as manufacturers such as Braun and Thonet, and institutes such as Bauhaus, to seek a standardisation by which to create products that are beautiful, solid and affordable at the same time. The final and deciding factor in the process of the forming of norms, is of course the consumer. However our ideas of a beautiful body or a meaningful product are constantly changing. In the end it is the culture that decides the success or the failure of new design standards.

The exhibition Norm = Form presents this world of standardisation and progress as well as a critique on its achievements by designers such as Maarten Baas and Joep van Lieshout.