Conclusions of the panel on the first internationally presented wemhöner award 2004:
When entering into a dialogue of this kind with the fresh creativity of young students and people starting their careers, the industry gets a superb chance to test the limits of what is feasible. New technologies, after all, have always led to new product designs at the point where, after an initial phase of awkward handling, the design reached solutions in the realm of meaning and total approach which met the limitations of technical possibilities. - And today? - Today, design goes beyond finding the beautiful form and is much more than simply the result of the technical production method. Design is more and more what gives a product the competitive edge, the ultimate personal product quality. Design, after all, will always be a way of interpreting the world in which we live and of experiencing it with all our senses, of defining our own point of view, even of reinventing ourselves.
In this sense, the entries submitted are a "powerful service" of the coming generation of designers, which will in turn instigate a no less "committed return" of the technology R & D teams, and some "intensive leg work" on the part of the industrial users. The ball is now in the other court ...
Artistic Director of the MARTa Herford, Herford
ad personam
Jan Hoet, born in 1936 in Leuven (Belgium) is the first Artistic Director of the newly founded Museum for Contemporary Art MARTa Herford, which represents a triad of furniture, art and architecture / living environment. He has been from 1975 on the Director of the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Gent. In Germany, Jan Hoet became well-known as artistic director of the documenta 9 in Kassel. He is also internationally renowned as curator of exhibitions in Montreal, Lisbon and Tokyo, and from Hong Kong, Limerick, Madrid and Truguri to Paris, Venice, Barcelona , Bonn and Mexico City.
short statement
"Design is more today than merely a new invention of form, but also more than a mere production method which can be technically implemented. Design is also at all times a way of reinventing the world in which we live. Design creates new environments - but by now it also creates itself. Design today is twofold: a material tool as well as an esthetical medium. The (artistic) realities of today are permanently multiplying. Even if design is distinct from art, these distinctions are becoming less clear all the time. The contexts and references make the differences, where design and art move in their own fields, - which does not mean, however, that the limits may not also overlap. Design can be termed a product created by technology, which also represents a complex tool. Design objects are at all times means for a sensual and esthetical redefinition in a world which has become contextualized."
