Design Pedagogy Behind the Iron Curtain 1945-1990: Towards the Professionalization of Designers

In the aftermath of the Second World War, schools of architecture and design in Eastern Europe emerged as dynamic sites of discourse focused on questions of both artistic pedagogy and the broader societal role of architects and designers. This session adopts a comparative framework to interrogate socialist design pedagogies impacted by political ideologies, market imperatives and industrial demands and, also, intradisciplinary theoretical discourses within and beyond the communist design world. In this context, we consider design education not merely as technical and/or artistic training, but also as a specific sphere enabling/resisting integration of demands raised by different social actors.

Our panel centers on case studies drawn from East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia to explore how the contexts of design pedagogy changed from the interwar Bauhaus emphasis on the unity of art, crafts and technology to the anticipated impact of the “Scientific and Technological Revolution” in the 1960s and growing awareness of the global environmental threat in the 1970s. Among other questions we ask are the following:

• How did the roles of professional designers change during this period and how did design schools influence and react to this transformation?
• Which pedagogical models and strategies were employed during this period?
• To what extent did Cold War geopolitical divisions during these decades and across these regimes shape educational approaches and how did national contexts influence local design pedagogies?

Given recent political and cultural shifts in parts of former Eastern Europe, we see these questions as newly relevant and timely.