Design has the task of connecting the material environment with people

Industrial designer Professor Martin Topel in a transfer talk on World Design Day on 27 April, in the university's own Schriefers Design Collection.

On World Design Day, designers are commemorated worldwide. The professional association of designers - the AIGA - introduced the World Day of Design in the USA on 27 April 2006. All design-related activities are celebrated on this day. To this end, the Vice-Rector for Finance and Transfer, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Anke Kahl, met the Wuppertal industrial designer Professor Martin Topel at a very special place: the Schriefers Design Collection.
"For me, design is the perfect function embedded in a completely coherent, stringent and aesthetic concept," begins the industrial design professor, who has been teaching at the University of Wuppertal since 2000.

The University of Wuppertal 's design collection is well worth seeing

In 1987, painter Professor Werner Schriefers donated part of his collection to the University of Wuppertal to make it accessible to students and the public. The collection contains more than 5,000 trend-setting industrial design products, primarily from the fields of office, household and interior design. Wuppertal is therefore home to a very special collection, which Professor Topel describes as follows. "This is an incredible collection that is unique in Germany. Around 50 per cent of the core of the collection consists of exhibits from the Schriefers collection from the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. However, we also have extremely exciting exhibits from the 1920s and 1930s, i.e. Bauhaus, New Frankfurt. Outstanding are a completely original model of the Frankfurt kitchen by the Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and originals by Ferdinand Kramer, Mies van der Rohe and Mart Stam. Furniture, chair designs, stoves, in other words a very broad spectrum from which one can wonderfully read the developments in product design but also the social context of products. And because of the large number of exhibits, we are always able to put new things centre stage so that you can come here regularly. The exhibition changes completely every six to seven months."

The beginning of system furniture

The Munich-born designer uses an armchair model from the 1960s to explain what makes a piece of design furniture so outstanding. "The special thing about this armchair from Dieter Rams' 620 programme, which he designed for Vitsoe in 1962, is that it is the forerunner of system or modular furniture. In other words, this furniture had a modular structure and was shipped disassembled. There were armchairs, footstools, two-seaters, three-seaters, and all were assembled from the same components. There is a single tool that engages in a double screw visible on the side, which also represents a visualised connection. Both the furniture retailer and the customer were able to change the furniture and expand it modularly." He goes on to explain that Ikea perfected this idea of mail-order furniture years later. What was new about this armchair programme was that the designer did not turn to a single sculptural object, but instead thought modularly and systemically for the first time.

Art and design

Martin Topel prefers to make a distinction between the terms design and art. "I wouldn't compare design with art, but I would compare the art object with the product." Because, in his opinion, art "can be anything and doesn't have to be anything" and is created in complete freedom from duplicability, material, process and expression, the key difference for him lies in the specific task and function that a product must fulfil. "The designer has the task of developing maximum innovation, maximum creative power within a clear specification, a limitation. That may be restrictive, but I believe it is the art of design to express itself optimally within this restriction." What both terms have in common, however, is the fact that both the artist and the designer reveal a great deal about themselves and thus expose themselves. Both the artwork and the product ultimately have to assert themselves on the market.

100 years of Bauhaus

No interview with a designer in 2019 can exclude the major topic of Bauhaus. In this context, we often read that design is the perfect combination of art and craftsmanship. Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus, immediately comes to mind. "He wanted to take art out of salon art and proclaimed the connection between craftsmanship and art. For him, it was important that all design ultimately found expression within the architecture and that all other trades and crafts were then integrated into this architecture: Furniture, textiles, things of daily use, etc.. And this craftsmanship component, which was then also expressed in the basic teachings of the Bauhaus, was fundamentally important to him."
The scientist sees a prime example of this combination of art and craftsmanship in a chair model by Aachen architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe labelled MR 10, which the Schriefers Collection is also exhibiting. "This is a cantilever chair with the famous iron yarn. Many aspects of these considerations come together here. For the first time, it was possible to produce cantilever chairs because there were seamlessly drawn tubes that arose from the needs of aircraft construction. Mart Stam was the first to realise this with his tightly angled cantilever chair and then Mies van der Rohe with the strongly arched curve radius, which brings more suspension to the chair. Plus the craftsmanship to find a fabric that can withstand the stresses and strains. The iron yarn is a multi-twisted and paraffinised cotton yarn with a three-ply knitted fabric that is virtually indestructible and could rub and chafe directly against the metal for years without being damaged. The result is an almost indestructible piece of furniture that is still in use today and that you can still buy as normal."

Exhibition planned for autumn

A retrospective is also planned for the Bergische Universität's design collection in the autumn, about which the 57-year-old reveals: "It will be an exciting exhibition curated by Thomas Schriefers, Werner Schriefers' son. It's about the consequences of the Bauhaus in the continuation of the Werkkunstschule in Wuppertal. We will show what happened here in Wuppertal in the 50s and 60s." With over 100 exhibits in the form of products, images and text documents, the exhibition shows the impact and realisation of the Bauhaus in Wuppertal.

Design in the 21st century

And what happens next? How will the development of design change in the 21st century? "Initially, it will have the same tasks as in the last hundred years: to connect the material environment with people, to make it usable and understandable," says Topel. What has already changed, however, is the combination of different machine capabilities in just one device. "I've already played this out with students. Here in the Schriefers Collection, I gave them the following task: Use your smartphone and stick a red dot for all the functions that have been taken over by the smartphone. In the end, almost 60 per cent of all products had red dots. They were typewriters, calculators, watches, audio devices, radios, record players, i.e. products that generate information, music and images, all of which are now subsumed by the smartphone. That has changed."
In contrast to the past, "we can now develop machines that produce their own spare parts," he explains. "We can offer customers highly customised products in serial production processes. On the other hand, digitalisation means that we have more and more human/machine interfaces that are changing because touchpoints are disappearing due to sensor technology and extended input options such as gesture or facial recognition. It is a major challenge for design to give the product a manageable feel. And we are also experiencing - and this has been the case for 100 years - a recurring desire for physicality, for touch quality". Topel explains the market leader Amazon. "Amazon is now also starting to build shops. First the mail order business destroyed the retail trade and now it is rebuilding the retail trade because it knows exactly that people want to have contact with the product. We know that with children. Children understand everything with their hands." He sees further concrete proof of his thesis in the observation of customers in retail. "For example, when we go into an electronics store, we see how people grasp products. They go there, they touch them, they want to know: is it plastic, is it metal, how heavy is the part, how easy is it to turn the knob, what noise does a flap make, etc."

Product design in a nutshell

Wuppertal is a city that is home to many companies that sell well-designed products. Topel knows them all. He uses one particular product to emphasise the special role of design. "For me, the diagonal cutters from Knipex epitomise all the virtues: absolute function, flawless cutting performance from the first to the thousandth cut. The tool is ergonomically perfect in the hand, it is extremely robust, has a protection class marking, is categorised within the product portfolio, has a consistent design and a perfect brand image. All the virtues of a hand tool are perfectly realised. The demand for contemporary product design is absolutely spot on."
Professor Topel therefore also sees a hopeful future for future designers and concludes: "In this respect, I'm not worried. We will continue to have very important tasks to fulfil with industrial design for the next 100 years."

Uwe Blass (interview from 20/03/2019)

Martin Topel studied industrial design at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences until 1989. He then founded two branches in Stuttgart and Darmstadt before taking up a professorship for Capital Goods Design and Product Systems at the University of Wuppertal in 2000.