Opening Keynote Lecture
Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design and the Role of Design Education
Bauhaus Festival School FUNDAMENTAL,
Bauhaus, Dessau, Germany
March 20 2019, 19.00
The émigré trajectories of Bauhaus designers, and the international impact they made on the objects and discourse of modernism forms a prominent theme of design history. This lecture considers another émigré story – that of Austrian-American Victor Papanek, whose work was defined by an ambivalence toward the functional modernism espoused by his fellow émigrés. It examines how his life as an émigré generated an alternative design approach, and the founding of socially responsible design as a pedagogic force. This lecture is delivered as part of the Bauhaus Dessau Centenary celebrations, under the theme School Fundamental.
image © University of the Applied Arts, Papanek Foundation