Furniture, means of transport, lighting … The objects that surround us in everyday life are numerous, but they often lead an anonymous existence. And yet the design of our daily environment is an important part of our cultural heritage. After all, behind every object lies a piece of history that tells us a little bit more about the society in which they play a role. That is why the Flanders Architecture Institute (VAi) set up a broad project on designer heritage.
Since 2013, the VAi has been working intensively on design, including design for interiors, furniture, ceramics, textiles, silverware and all kinds of applied arts. Attention is paid to both small-scale artisanal practice and industrial design.
Several objectives underlie this project. To begin with, the VAi wants to catch up with the registration and long-term preservation of private designer heritage, as valuable cultural heritage and as source material for both historical research and design research. The project also seeks to raise awareness of its importance among designers, heritage managers and cultural heritage organizations and to stimulate a specific policy. Lastly, it seeks to build up and pass on expertise regarding the preservation of designer heritage.
Do you want to find out more about this project? Then contact nina.serulus@vai.be
The VAi is looking for design archives to further map out this heritage. It can be an archive of a tile company, design drawings for wallpaper or the correspondence of a glass painter with his or her clients. Do you yourself have an archive or do you know of archival material or collections held by other organizations or private individuals? Let us know at nina.serulus@vai.be
Are you looking for designers and their archives? Search the central Architectural Archives Database. If you enter the keyword ‘design’ under ‘Search in the text’, you will find more than 200 archive records, about 2000 records of designers and other relevant parties, 300 organization records (companies, manufacturers, collaborations) and about ten publication records (mainly of design journals).
The archives guide Vormgevingserfgoed in Vlaanderen na 1945 (Design heritage in Flanders after 1945) offers an overview for the first time of archives and collections on design that are publicly accessible in Flanders and Brussels. More than 200 descriptions of the archives of designers, manufacturers, authorities, training courses and shops are preceded by essays by Fredie Floré, Ko Goubert, Irene Amanti Lund, Katarina Serulus and Eva Van Regenmortel. Edited by Eva Van Regenmortel and Ellen Van Impe, the guide is a tool for researchers, heritage workers and design lovers, and is published as the sixth issue in the series ‘Focus Architectuurarchieven’ (‘Focus Architecture Archives’).
Archives guide Design heritageBrowse through more than 400 images from design archives in the image bank and be inspired by drawings, photographs, plans and posters from the archives of Maarten van Severen, Bataille & Ibens, Van Den Berghe-Pauvers and many others.
Image bank Design heritageThe cultural heritage of design does not only consist of the sketches, models, photographs or correspondence of designers. There is also a strong interaction in design between explicit knowledge and unconscious knowledge, knowledge that may be passed on but which is usually not recorded in written form. That knowledge is literally in the hands and heads of the ‘makers’. Nevertheless, in order to document some of this embodied knowledge, the VAi conducted four interviews with designers from different disciplines. In addition, the VAi also recorded conversations with three policymakers who have played a key role in the design sector over the past decades and documented the last days of the Van den Berghe-Pauvers furniture workshop.
Archives
and heritage collections are not only relevant for scientific research
or exhibitions, but also for contemporary design. The VAi asked textile
designer Nathalie Van der Massen to be inspired by the archive of
interior designers Bataille & Ibens, which is kept in the VAi collection. The design process and the result will be shown in the margins of the exhibition Ensembles - Architecture and Craft at deSingel.
The VAi assists designers and manufacturers (or their heirs) in their search for a suitable public repository for their archives. Click below for an overview of the transfers and processes that the VAi has assisted in recent years.
The VAi workshop ‘Design your archive!’ challenged designers and producers to take care of their archive.
On Wednesday 22 October 2014, the workshop ‘Design your archive!’ was held in the Speakers Corner of Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk. Practical tips for the preservation of archives and digital documents were interspersed with discussions on designer heritage. Moderator Griet Pauwels discussed the memory of Belgian design and how to deal with designer heritage. To do so, she received in succession researcher Katarina Serulus, furniture restorer Jan Fack, textile designer Martine Gyselbrecht, heritage manager Rie Vermeiren as well as Frederic Rozier, who (re)markets furniture designs by Belgian designers.
