forum design

In 1980 a piece of land between the motorway, the Railway Bridge and the Danube thoroughly shook up the design world: the forum design in Linz marked a milestone in the history of design.

With the Pulse of the Time

Immediately following the sensational large sculptures of the forum metall (1977), the four-person team with the rector of the Art University Linz Helmuth Gsöllpointner (Angela Hareiter, Laurids Ortner, Peter Baum) started thinking about the theme of design. It was an ideally chosen point in time – because: this was the beginning of postmodernism. In design there was a palpable desire for more sensuousness and humor. Design was caught in a field of tension at that time: the transition from Bauhaus with its clear, unmistakable form language on the one hand, and design reduced to pure functionality over the course of decades on the other.

Train with a Café

The extent to which everyone is constantly influenced by the omnipresence of design: for 100 days, from 27 June to 5 October 1980, forum design focused on raising awareness of this issue. The exhibition building was by the architecture design group Haus-Rucker-Co. The temporary architecture was simultaneously part of the overall concept: a long train with wagon-like single pavilions covered with a protective skin of white plastic. At the end of this train was the Linz Café, a yellow-painted wooden construction by the architect Christopher Alexander.

"The Bauhaus of the Eighties"

Introductions to the subject matter and thematic fields of design and a historical outline were placed in the entrance area of the exhibition building. Individual concepts by leading international designers were juxtaposed with industrial design plans and products in the wagons on both sides of the middle section. An extensive treatment of the term design in the broadest sense was undertaken for the first time by the forum design. This was to have a lasting influence on further developments in the field of design. Or as Raymond Loewy said in his opening speech for the forum design: the forum design is the "Bauhaus of the eighties". The exhibition was accompanied by the equally well received publication "Design is Invisible".

forum design in the Capital of Culture Year 2009

The international success of the exhibition forum design was already overshadowed by media conflicts while it was still running. The withdrawal of funders and sponsors led to a financial situation for the design show in the 80s that resulted in criminal proceedings. For the Capital of Culture Year and in cooperation with Linz09, the Museum of the Federal Province of Upper Austria organized an exhibition entitled "The Case of forum design". Former protagonists, staff, legal experts and critics of the forum design were brought together again for this exhibition.