19 stories
of Soviet
design
About the exhibition
“19 stories about Soviet Design” is a documentary exhibition which is timed to the 50th anniversary of Ural School of Design.
The creation of the exposition was dedicated to the development of the All-Russian Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics (VNIITE), a large-scale network of Design and Research institutes which had no equivalents in the world.
The exposition worked in conjunction with the online project “Timeline of the development of the State Design System 1962-1992”, which reveals the key dates and events of the 30-year history of design in the USSR of the second half of the XXth century.
Concept
This is an interview-exhibition. 19 stories about Soviet design were collected in the format of accurate and succinct statements that summarize and reveal the aspects of a multifaceted and ambiguous history of the USSR state design system development.
Here are some quotes from design artists who invented the profession of a designer in the Soviet Union in the 1960-s. Their task was to create a new attractive substantive and objective world in conditions of planned economy and information deficit. Each designer turned the period of work in VNIITE into a very personal topic, so everyone told their own story.
Artistic
and technical
solutions
At this exhibition, we decided not to use multimedia and interactive technologies. Our goal was to remove unnecessary elements and provide a focus on the content, while sustaining a certain style and texture.
The exhibition includes issues of the magazine “Technical Aesthetics” which was popular in the USSR, personal archival photographs of Soviet designers, fragments of documentaries and some serial samples of industrial products.
Using short quotes from Soviet designers, we showed the design objects through the eyes of the designers themselves. Each statement is illustrated with projects and archival photographs. The unrealized projects of VNIITE were recreated in 3D graphics.
Specific features
of the content
The exposition was placed in the space of the Museum of Architecture and Design of Ural State University of Architecture and Art in the Historical Square of Yekaterinburg. Large exhibition hall of the museum is a bright room with panoramic a floor-to-ceiling windows, where white cubic structures and trusses with banners were carefully installed.
The guests of the exhibition were not distracted by anything at the time of interaction with the content. The objects were placed on cubic tables so nothing could stop a visitor from touching or examining the exhibits. Visitors could drive a rotary phone, flip through a magazine, press the radio and TV buttons, look at the street outside the window through binoculars.
The exhibits were provided by the Yekaterinburg Museum of Soviet Life “Made in the USSR” and “Antimuseum of Computers and Games”. Also the Museum of Architecture and Design presented a comprehensive collection of archival magazines “Technical Aesthetics”.
"Technical Aesthetics"
Project support
