smow blog compact: CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge Berlin

When Italian designer/design theologian Enzo Mari released his Autoprogettazione family of self build furniture in 1974 he did so with the aim of challenging popular conventions on industrial furniture production, and for all the concept that price is related to quality; the real value of an object, according to Mari, being something more intrinsic, something that exists inherent within a piece of furniture and which comes from a purity of form. Commercial furniture production distorts this relationship through a focus on “newness” and the creation of a belief that expensive is desirable, presenting luxury as the pinnacle of human achievement. Through building their own furniture consumers should learn to appreciate the importance of form in furniture and thus the real value of an object.

Some forty years later the Berlin based initiative CUCULA are using the Autoprogettazione family to similarly challenge popular conventions, albeit in relation to refugees from Africa, European society’s impression of refugees and the refugees own impressions of their position in European society.

Founded in 2013 with the aim of working with refugees to help them open up new perspectives and build a new, sustainable life in Berlin without the stigma of “victim or “helpless”, a central facet of the initiative’s work is a furniture workshop in which, together with a professional product designer, five young West Africans produce objects from Mari’s Autoprogettazione programme.

Until April 6th the fruits of this labour can be viewed in a small showcase at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge in Berlin.

CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge Berlin

One of the central features of “Open Design” projects such as Autoprogettazione is that every maker is entitled, indeed actively encouraged, to change and adapt the objects to suit their own needs, or in the the case of the CUCULA makers, their own situation.

Having started by simply (re)producing the Autoprogettazione chairs, the five makers subsequently started working their own experiences into the pieces, the result being the so-called Ambassador collection of 50 chairs into which wood from Lampedusa refugee boats has been integrated and which thus not only highlight the reason for the chairs existence but much more transforms the chairs from purely functional sitting machines into reminders of the journey made by the five, the fact that ever more continue to make such journeys and of the international community’s helplessness and/or unwillingness to either stop such or to properly respond to the needs of those making such journeys.

The true value of the object being as Enzo Mari teaches not something which can be assessed in monetary terms alone, but rather is contained in the object, in its form, in its construction, in its story.

Wood from Lampedusa refugee boats, and its integration into furniture, as seen at CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge Berlin

In addition to the the Ambassador collection the showcase also presents an illustration of the simplicity of the Autoprogettazione concept as demonstrated by the Sedia Uno kids chair and a new bar height version of the classic Sedia Uno developed by Moussa Usuman and which we suspect is just the first of several new models and objects the project will realise: a recent crowdfunding campaign having raised sufficient funds to develop and expand the project.

CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design at the Museum der Dinge Berlin is little more than a few chairs and bits of wood on a large pedestal, in itself its not especially exciting; however, it is an excellent reminder that design isn’t just about trends, innovation or aesthetics, but as Enzo Mari puts it in his own idiosyncratic and provocative way in the 2002 re-edition of Autoprogettazione, “In my job as designer, or rather as an intellectual who contradicts the actual state of things, I try within the network of commissions and projects to ‘smuggle in’ moments of research and ways of creating the stimulus to free oneself from idealogical conditioning, standard norms, behaviour, and taste.”¹

Design should motivate us to think. If not act.

CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design runs at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge Berlin, Oranienstraße 25, 10999 Berlin until Monday April 6th

Full details can be found at www.museumderdinge.de

And further details on CUCULA can be found at www.cucula.org

1. Enzo Mari Autoprogettazione?, Corraini Edizioni, Mantova, 2002

Autoprogettazione by Enzo Mari. Designs for furniture. And a new future.

Two Sedia Uno’s from the CUCULA Ambassador collection, as seen at CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge Berlin

The bar height Sedia Uno by Moussa Usuman, as seen at CUCULA – Refugees Company for Crafts and Design at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge Berlin