What’s so special about Dutch design?

In design one doesn’t necessarily accept ‘the problem as given’. So if you ask me ‘what is Dutch design?’, I say that it isn’t a problem – but that repeated attempts to define it are a problem.

Obsessions with national characteristics in design begin in 1985. ^[1] With the end of the Cold War, interest intensified. ^[2] Attempts have since been made to map national characteristics in design. ^[3] Today, it’s argued that the democratisation of southern and eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1990s is what prompted examination of national styles in terms of product semantics, ‘cursory historical analysis’, and the commercial benefits of product differentiation. ^[4]

Perhaps. Yet it was probably Theodore Levitt’s 1983 trumpeting of globalisation, design aspects emphatically included, that set off the discussion on national characteristics. ^[5] For the tone of that discussion is usually that of a worldly but rearguard action against the universals of functionality, and for the chimera of national ‘style’ in design.

For Dutch design, which relies so well on exports, has a good ingredient of practical engineering, and boasts very varied aesthetics, that tone is none too edifying. Yet we can expect more of it in years to come. Anxious to appear anti-capitalist, most designers dislike globalisation. Alarmism about climate change and ‘peak oil’, together with a wider loss of direction in design, today conspire to make the local the thing to be in design.

I only hope Dutch design avoids such a parochial perspective.

References

[1] They began in that year with Stephen Bayley’s exhibition National characteristics in design, held at the V&A Boilerhouse, London.

[2] Hugh Aldersey-Williams, World Design: Nationalism and Globalism in Design, Rizzoli International Publications, 1992.

[3] Kelly Dawson, Povl Larsen, Gavin Cawood and Alan Lewis, ‘National Product Design Identities’, Creativity and Innovation Management, Vol 14, No 4, December 2005.

[4] Viviana Narotzky, ‘Selling the Nation: Identity and Design in 1980s Catalonia’, Design Issues, Summer 2009, Vol 25, No 3.

[5] Levitt held nationalism in consumer preference to be ‘obsolete’. A UK firm like Hoover, he said, should simply force European consumers to load their clothes from the top. See Theodore Levitt, ‘The globalization of markets’, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1983.