Press information
Press Information / Press Conference: Fri, 1 Dec 2024, 11.00 am
The exhibition Shapes of the Future looks at the work and visionary potential of the German designer and aerodynamicist Luigi Colani. The Museum Marta Herford, located in the centre of the wood and furniture industry, has often addressed themes from architecture and design and is thus focusing now on the influence of a pioneer who was not only active and influential in the region but also attracted worldwide attention.
Luigi Colani (b. 1928 in Berlin as Lutz Colani; d. 2019 in Karlsruhe) distinguished himself from dominant straight-line trends in design with his streamlined designs modelled on nature and developed his own, rigorous and innovative formal idiom. Many of his approaches are visionary from today’s perspective because he made use of the energies and forms of the natural environment and translated them.
Colani’s career as a designer began with vehicles and airplanes. Aerodynamics and efficiency and research into materials are the guidelines for coming up with ideas. His “BioDesign” explicitly relates to human beings and their biological needs. The materiality of plastic, which was still regarded uncritically at the time, was ideal for Colani to apply the language of organic forms he had conceived to various items of furniture and other objects.
Not least, Colani’s life in eastern Westphalia was no small influence on his intense work in furniture design. He created designs of flexible use that break with established ideas about objects and follow the form of the body. He also reacted to technical, social, and ecological transformation over time. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, for example, he worked more with wood as a renewable raw material.
In addition, Luigi Colani developed early on visions of the future such as electric cars and modular forms of housing and even designed cities based on modern, more flexible models for living. He wrote down his ideas and ideals in his design manifesto Ylem (1971). In that collection of designs and statements in a valise, he writes, for example: “Only a new type of human being who will recognise in the next general the dictatorship of the line and eliminated […] can work with some hope for success on building new agglomerations of housing.”
This exhibition offers insight into the breadth of Luigi Colani’s work and shows objects ranging from the prototype to the popular mass design. Vehicles from the bicycle by way of the bobsleigh to prototypes for the luxurious Pierce Arrow illustrate Colani’s ideas about mobility. There are also everyday objects from the home, including a drinking glass with an indented grip, computers and televisions, diverse seating furniture such as the curving “Sadima” recliner for Kusch+Co and regional productions such as Interlübke’s “Zocker” stool for dynamic sitting posture. The presentation is supplemented by bathroom fixtures for Villeroy & Boch and designs for skiing outfits.
Going beyond industrial productions, Colani developed innovative objects for education such as furniture for children that “grows along with them” and the “Learning Egg” (1971), with which Colani applied his idea of a functional spatial capsule to computer-aided learning situations.
One area of the exhibition is dedicated to Colani’s charismatic and not uncritical personality: with his sometimes eccentric and elaborate designs but especially because of his effervescent nature and harsh criticism of existing design standards, the designer quickly earned a reputation as an enfant terrible. At the same time, it shows that Colani was driven by absolute conviction about his subject and constant drive to innovate and optimize in the spirit of a design that is in harmony with the human being and nature.
Finally, the show does justice to the designer’s manner and far-reaching effect, especially in Ostwestfalen-Lippe, with a participatory project that accompanies the exhibition: in the “Bring Your Own Colani” action, visitors are invited to bring their own Colani-designed objects as well as their memories of and experiences with him in a separate area of the exhibition.
The exhibition has been curated by the guest curators Tobias Henschen and Julian Puszcz (Zweieckig design studio) as well as Prof. Tim Brauns (Technische Hochschule OWL). In addition to the concept for the example, the design experts have developed a display for the twenty-metre-tall rooms of the Gehry Galleries, which takes up the curved forms of Luigi Colani’s design and links them to the accommodations.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a varied programme with curator tours, workshops and lectures, for example, by Dr. Hellen Westerhof, who was Luigi Colani’s last master student. The exhibition of the 11th RecyclingDesignprize will be held in parallel in the Gehry Galleries. Current developments in contemporary sustainable design and material research will be seen in dialogue with Colani’s visions.
Artistic Direction
Kathleen Rahn
Coordination
Friederike Korfmacher (Assistant Curator)
Guest Curators
Prof. Tim Brauns (TH OWL/Detmolder Schule für Gestaltung)
Tobias Henschen (Zweieckig design studio)
Julian Puszcz (Zweieckig design studio)
Exhibits
Design objects ranging from vehicles by way of furniture to dishes, clothing, drawings, and photographs
Exhibition Area
Gehry Galleries: Dome and Lange Galerie, ca. 800 sq. m.
Exhibition Dates
- 1 Dec 2024 — 23 Mar 2025
Opening
- 1 Dec, 11.00 am, opening of the exhibitions Luigi Colani – Shapes of the Future and 11th RecyclingDesignprize, with award ceremony
The speakers will include Ina Brandes (Minister of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia), Tim Kähler (Mayor of the City of Herford), and Kathleen Rahn (Director of the Museum Marta Herford).
Supported by
Press Contacts
Jana Mareike Lehnert
Manuela Skrabanik
Press and Public Relations Museum Marta Herford
presse@marta-herford.de
https://marta-herford.de/