Design centers are supposed to bring various strengths together
Design center is used to describe three different environments: regional institutions that promote design, upscale shopping malls, and centralized design departments within large companies.
Since the 1950s, the term “design center” has been typically used to refer to state-sponsored (and occasionally industrysponsored) organizations dedicated to the promotion of design (Design Associations).
Their task in a national or regional context has been to convince small- and mid-sized businesses of design’s cultural relevance. The centers also organize exhibitions, seminars, workshops, and lectures for the public as informational platforms on particular aspects of design.
Design centers are supposed to bring various strengths together. They are based on an educational philosophy, as was the case with their pioneer models in handicrafts (Craft) and industry at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Today, the idea behind these model institutions, which were meant to have a direct, positive effect on businesses and consumers, seems both idealistic and outdated.
Nonetheless, after the Second World War they were considered internationally the model for success in state support of design, as first instituted by the Design Council in England in 1946. The idea of the design center as a neutral meeting place for designers, industry, and scientists of different disciplines also met with great interest in Germany for a while.
In line with Germany’s federal structure, decentralized design centers were established, each with a different objective. The Rat für Formgebung, or the German Design Council (founded in 1953), the Industrie Forum Design Hannover (also in 1953), and the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen (in 1954) all achieved international recognition. Since the 1990s, however, any attempts to establish design centers in former East Germany have failed.
Institutions that promote design began redefining themselves in the mid-1990s. In the course of this strategic professionalization, the parties involved began seeing design mainly as an economic factor and, after state funding was largely stopped, most design centers turned into service enterprises. They organize competing design competitions (Design Awards) that primarily serve to boost designers’ and companies’ egos and to market those products that win awards.
Commercial design centers are shedding unnecessary baggage and, in the process, design itself is losing the authority of insight. A designer’s intentions also play a role in this case and are often as short-term as their clients’ expected rate of returns.
This transformation is taking place all over the world. The Design Council in London has become a design business center that supports the economic renewal and export of British design services and goods. The Netherlands closed its new design center as early as the late 1990s.
Dutch design is now far more influenced by experimental design academies and design groups than conventional design sponsorship. In Italy, institutional support is rare because there has always been a close collaboration between business management and external designers.
In the 1980s, America introduced an entirely new definition of design center. Now the term can also mean a shopping mall, where furnishings, lifestyle products, and interesting products or brands can be purchased in various shops located under one roof. Germany adopted this term, translating it as Stilwerk (style factory). There are now four different shopping malls located in major German cities, whose suppliers network in order to enrich commerce with culture. Yet it is difficult for a design center-cum-marketplace to develop and maintain a genuinely interesting profile.
A third use of the phrase design center is found within the corporate context, whereby design management consolidates the design department under one roof in order to understand the particularities of regional markets and brands faster and convert this knowledge into new products and services. Design departments of car manufacturers are concentrated at company headquarters or in attractive cities or regions such as Barcelona, London, or California. Unlike institutions that sponsor design, design departments attempt to scout out decentralized cultural differences.
Some German design centers are financially very successful, yet their influence on national exports is marginal. A sociology dissertation written in 2000 recommends that German design centers should overcome their divisions and start being more aggressive at marketing.
All three uses of the phrase share one common objective: focusing on design. In the age of global networking, new forms of organization are being created that will no longer rely on a geographical concentration and location of design skills.