• Preview of DESIGNMAI 2007
• The Ciba Modul-box at the Kölner Passagen

By Oliver Spies

Imagine you need to buy some glasses. You go to the opticians, pick out a pair you like and try them on to see if they suit you. If you’re exceedingly lucky, you’ll need to look no further. But the chances are that you’ll have to try on hundreds of pairs that look very wrong before you reach your “eureka” moment.

Ski goggles by Martin Güntert

This is all about to change. At the DESIGNMAI 2007 in Berlin, Martin Güntert, a design student from Kassel used a pair of ski goggles to demonstrate how 3D-scanning and rapid prototyping processes can directly tailor a design to the anatomy of the client. “There’s no such thing as it doesn’t fit” becomes the rule, as digital design-aids expand the tool palette, producing ‘digital skills’ with direct client applications.

Martin Güntert at the DESIGNMAI Forum

DIGITABILITY was the motto of this year’s Berlin DESIGNMAI, where the city played host to a week-long presentation of the best of international design. The DESIGNMAI headquarters, the “Forum”, was the site of a comprehensive exhibition showcasing the aesthetic impact and technical possibilities of the digitally expanded designer horizon. Interface design, experimentally generated results of laser sinter processing, and digital adaptation of second-hand clothing are only a few examples.

Metrofarm showing Concrete Furniture

Over 80 exhibitions spread throughout the city used the “digital theme” as an opportunity to focus exclusively on state-of-the art-technology. Visitors could get hands-on experience of the impact of the digital on our understanding of design in all number of playful projects. For example taking on a digital existence in the human laboratory exhibition DigiDigDig. And anyone who found the digital experience too immaterial could always turn to the very solid: concrete furniture, as an example, and other “real” products. New furniture, via its makers and distributors, made up, as every year, a large segment of the exhibitors in Berlin.

Ciba XYMARA at DESIGNMAI

DESIGNMAI does not only serve as an information and presentation platform for designers (whether Berlin-based or those who travel in from all over the world). A continually growing design-interested audience from other disciplines collects here to find answers to their individual design questions. And indeed the main focus of the Berlin event is to promote “communication between designers and people interested in design”. This exchange of ideas does not only take place throughout the two-day symposium; the evening and night events and parties also offer unique opportunities to collaborate on new, visionary projects. Only one month after the SaloneSatelite at the Milan Design Week, everyone meets up again in Berlin to work on next year’s ideas. And often with partners from within the industry, large numbers of whom are represented at the DESIGNMAI.

DESIGNMAI night activities