At Designarkivet (The Design Archive) in Pukeberg, the visitor can experience its unique contents and learn about design processes. Through sketches by different designers, we learn about aspects that the finished product doesn’t reveal. At the same time, the archive is focused on the work of the individual designer, on the products while other perspectives disappear. It can be about immaterial cultural heritage, about knowledge of materials, about the places of production and their use. Through (Re-)learning the Archive we seek to expand Designarkivet to include stories depicting how diverse everyday lives have been shaped. In (Re-)learning the Archive we want to formulate a design and craft history that narrates other contexts and creates new relationships. We seek to expand design and craft history in order to tell other stories about our times. From here we make an attempt at contributing to sustainable futures.
The relationship between the past, present and future is key to (Re-)learning the Archive. It should not simply be read as a history writing project. History stands in relation to how we understand the present and thereby also how we create futures. Where the design of modernity saw itself as problem solving and “placeless”, (Re-)learning the Archive argues the importance of place in understanding design, for specific knowledges and agency of local cultures. This makes the project important also to a contemporary design that today is formulating a different role beyond problem solving. This is a design that acts situated, in processes, in society together with the people that lives here.
The project claims the importance of place, not only in the writing of history but also in the understanding of contemporary design and craft. Småland is the place of (Re-)learning the Archive. It is a location where some of the objects in Designarkivet have been produced, as a result of successful glass and furniture industries. However, not much of Swedish design history has been written from here. Instead, this history has been formulated within academies, museums and archives of bigger cities. At the same time, Småland is the setting for amazing amateur museums, local heritage museums and other historical networks telling tales of everyday lives have been shaped in the countryside. Hence, the project doesn’t suggest Designarkivet as a singular place, but as a map, intertwining a multitude of places and perspectives.
Through this three year long project, we re-learn together and create a varied history of design. We search for new knowledge together with curious people inside and outside of Småland – with young, old, designers, crafts people, students, pensioners, and many others.
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