One of the two central locations of the otherwise decentral Berlin Design Week, BDW, 2025 is and was the new Kalle complex in Neukölln, a former Kardstadt department store transformed into a mix of office, retail, hospitality and event spaces that hosted a number of BDW showcases, and a phenomenally loud building site, but less said, soonest mended. And also, certainly when we were there, hosted a fascinating demonstration of the black art of floor cleaning; albeit one that we couldn't help thinking should and could have been undertaken before the exhibitions opened rather than waiting till visitors were there and then cleaning around them, but, again, less said, soonest mended...
...hosted a number of BDW showcases including Crafted Liberation, a project by the Sydney & Vienna based RK Collective that transformed headscarves donated by over 500 women in Iran in to shell seats intended for use in stadia. Functional, tactile seating that while physically unspectacular and of minimum physical design interest, are conceptually delicious on a whole number of levels, including via their presentation in Neukölln. A truly engaging example of design processes as subversive tools for activism, resistance and social discourse. And a reminder that design isn’t only physical, visual.
And also hosted the project Focus by students of the Industrial Design Studio at the Tomas Bata University, Zlín; a project that began with an awareness of, and reflections on, the (ever increasing) number of stimuli, distractions, we are all exposed to every day and set the brief to develop an object to help us slow down, deepen our concentration, to help us focus.
A position, a necessity to slow down and focus, in many regards echoed round the corner from Kalle, technically on the other side of the phenomenally loud building site, in the project Slow Looking at Street Art by a collective of students at the CODE University of Applied Sciences which sought to develop aids to allowing us to become more aware of our immediate environment, to enable us slow down and focus on that which is around us; and a brief the Zlín Industrial Design Studio students approached from a wide variety of perspectives, in a wide variety of contexts, and via a wide variety of solutions.
As ever such a student project is never ever about the end result, is always about what the individual student got from the project, the process, the discourse, what the student learned, how the project impacted on and informed their positions on design, designers, objects, environments etc. The end object is in many regards incidental. That said, from the presented works a couple did particularly catch our attention and hold us in an interesting conversation for longer than others: specifically the projects Trivo by Veronika Chovančíková & Johana Kania, Foculo by Jan Kroulík and Focus Ring by Jiří Sousedík.
Trivo being a room divider system based around felt triangles joined by three different clip forms, a divider system that does nothing spectacular, but does so with a great deal of ease, grace, openness. And that via the possibility of adding shelves does so with an optional functionality that is very welcome in a transient, transformable, room divider but only very rarely offered by a transient, transformable room divider. And in doing so poses the very astute question of why such is so rarely offered?
Focus Ring being a, well... ring that less... rings as buzzes when you reach for your phone, a bit, certainly in our brains, like electric shock collars intended to stop cats attacking birds, just more gentle, discreet and less cruel. A ring that while it may not necessarily actively stop you reaching for your phone, and there are moments when it is necessary, should make you more aware of how often you reach for your phone in moments when it's not urgently necessary and thereby enable an analysis of your relationship with your phone. While there is always the option to include an escalation where the more often you reach for your phone, the more intense the buzz, and possible at extreme use levels an electric shock. Which, yes, would make it a bit more like a cat collar.
A use of novel technology to correct a problem brought about by novel technology that did and does stimulate a feeling within us of human society trapped in a death spiral of our own making, of always believing that novel technology will rescue us, while all it does is drag us further down.
A use of novel technology to correct novel technology, and also a feeling of being trapped in a death spiral, that is and was also inherent in Foculo, a pair of glasses that use augmented reality to actively reduce the field of vision, much like horse blinkers, and presumably with a similar intended result.
And also, primarily for us, a very nice reflection on glasses as one of the earliest tools to correct and adjust our focus in an age when problems of focus aren't caused by extraocular muscles.
And a position of restricting your field of vision to improve your focus that thus very much allows for access to possible analogue concepts to help us slow down, deepen our concentration, to help us focus. Reminds that slowing down, concentrating, focussing starts and ends with us.
Focus by the Industrial Design Studio, Tomas Bata University, Zlín can be viewed at Kalle, Karl-Marx-Straße 101, 12043 Berlin until Sunday May 18th.
More information on the Industrial Design Studio, Tomas Bata University, Zlín can be found at https://fmk.utb.cz
Further details on Berlin Design Week can be found at https://berlindesignweek.com
