DESIGNFORUM VIENNA | NEW DESIGN UNIVERSITY
ONE MILLION - THE USE VALUE OF ART. ABOUT THE ORDER AND ASSIGNMENT OF THINGS
A LECTURE BY ULI AIGNER
Symposium: Februar 28, 2023, 9:30 am - 8 pm
Lecture 2 - Uli Aigner: 11:45 am - 12:30 pm
Location: designforum Wien, Museumplatz 1, 1070 Vienna
-> www.designaustria.at
-> www.ndu.ac.at
-> VIEW PROGRAM (IN GERMAN)
Otl Aicher (1922–1991) is regarded as one of the most important and influential designers of visual communication in the 20th century. “On the occasion of his 100th birthday, a new generation of (...) designers and digital natives may ask themselves whether they can still learn something from Otl Aicher. Hopefully yes.” (Kreuz; 2021).
The company FSB (Franz Schneider Brakel GmbH + Co KG), whose logo and appearance was shaped by Otl Aicher from the mid-1980s, took his 100th birthday as an opportunity to initiate an intensive examination of the person and work together with the New Design University .
Students in the 3rd semester of the Interior Design & Visual Communication master's degree are currently developing an exhibition that shows Otl Aicher's thoughts and actions and further thinks critically on the basis of their own projects.
Fundamental to this is Otl Aicher's assumption that, contrary to an intuitive assumption, philosophy not only has a great deal to do with architecture and design, but also in principle leads to the same goal: shaping the world. One could postulate in the sense of Otl Aicher (and also Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose work had a strong influence on Otl Aicher): design is philosophy (just different). Just like philosophers, designers also have to deal with basic questions of being human if they want to shape the human environment in a meaningful and sustainable way. “Philosophy and design converge on a common point. Philosophy in thinking, design in doing. That point is that our world is in the state of being manufactured. It is designed, it is made, we have to see how good and how bad we are when we use it.” (Otl Aicher) Unlike many philosophers, however, Otl Aicher postulates that doing has a certain priority over thinking, whereby he always keeps the close connection of doing and thinking. In a certain way he demanded thinking from doing and also practiced this himself.
In addition to the exhibition, the significance of Otl Aicher and his theses for today's working women designers will be examined, critically questioned, thought through, confirmed or contradicted, but above all discussed, by the same women designers within the framework of a symposium.
