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 ...
Undersecretary in the North-Rhine-Westphalian Ministry for Science and Research
(represented by Mr. Heiner Kleffner)
ad personam
Hartmut Krebs, born in 1946 in Isny / Allgäu, is today Undersecretary in the North-Rhine-Westphalian Ministry for Science and Research. His political career started out in the NRW Government in Düsseldorf and continued via the State Chancellery and various Ministries, constantly bringing him in touch with the subject of design, and here above all in the promotion of export trade and industry, and not least in the transfer of technology and know-how between colleges and the economy.
short statement
"The wemhöner award 2004 is positioned between real design visions and a world of possibilities, which always forms when the restrictions of reality are left behind, and when not only the imagination but also the emotions are allowed free rein. The wemhöner award is therefore something very special, allowing free-flowing ideas to cross borders and to interlace. It provides a field for new enthusiastic designers in which they can compete. The 3D technology has reached a point where it is almost a part of the new media art, apart from offering new design possibilities. The public gets a chance with the wemhöner award to view business and industrial design on a playful artistic stage. The region could and should use this as basis for a new international dialogue. North-Rhine-Westphalia is a country of the classical as well as innovative industrial design, aiming at European as well as international exposure for its companies, whether in Eastern Westphalia with the wemhöner award, or at the Mining Museum Zeche Zollverein with the design school, or with the Design Centre NRW and the scheduled entry in the world presentation in 2005."
