Archive Talk: Cubic 3 Design

28 February 2019 18:45 - 19:30

Speculative Design Archive, 2018. Art direction: Studio Veronica Ditting

Perhaps the lack of digital documentation of the work of Cubic3 Design is the reason the duo is overlooked in Dutch design history, or maybe it's that they are just not understood. What would it mean to them if they did get this kind of online recognition? Would they have more control over the position attributed to them in the historiography of Dutch design and the significance given to their oeuvre?

Cubic 3 Design

The Cubic3 Design archive is the result of the highly productive Avant La Lettre agency. The design duo Ton Hoogerwerf and Gerwin van Vulpen created a furore in the early eighties with quirky designs inspired by post-punk culture, deviating from the dominant functionalist design of the time. Yet Cubic3 Design has become forgotten, with only design experts still aware of their oeuvre. In part this is due to a lack of available information - the duo ended before the internet took off, and there was very little about them published online. The digitisation and opening up of their archive, preserved and ordered by the designers, could change this. In this Archive Talk designer, curator and exhibition maker Delany Boutkan talks with Hoogerwerf and Van Vulpen.

Archive Talks - Speculative Design Archive

The Archive Talks series invites experts to go deeper into the stories behind various archival materials, many of which are shown in the Speculative Design Archive exhibition. What background knowledge or thoughts are hidden behind the archives in the Storage Area, the Study Depot and the Showroom? What alternative forms have been used to compile, examine, disclose and interpret them? How does this effect the way they are used and their meaning? What does this mean for the creation of future archives?

Against the backdrop of the Speculative Design Archive we talk to archivists, archive users and other experts about specific archival models. All these different perspectives are the reason for the continuous conversations about the possible forms that a design archive can take and the meanings that can be attributed to them. Informal, interactive and in an intimate setting, each conversation adds a new layer to the exhibition.

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