Events such as Berlin Design Week naturally provide an attractive platform for countries and regions to present themselves and their creatives.
Some shows do that very well. Some less so.
The exhibition Reset Design - New working models currently showing at the Spanish Embassy Berlin belongs to the first category.
Curated by Marcelo Leslabay Reset Design presents ten young Spanish companies, companies all founded in the last three years by designers looking for new ways to produce, market and sell their work. If you will companies born of the desire to break away from the role of the designer as simply a service provider for industry. And indeed to move away from mass production in favour of smaller scale, local production of relatively limited series.
Marcelo Leslabay refers to this process as post-craftsmanship. A phrase we really, really like. Even if we don't 100% agree with.
Presenting a nice mix of furniture, lighting, crockery and accessories Reset Design is as much a presentation of the companies as it is of the theory of post-craftsmanship; but doesn't suffer as a result. Much more through the focus on the companies one can see that through self production designers have more freedom to explore and develop those approaches, those materials and those production processes that they consider important. But which the controlling department of a global manufacturer wouldn't.
Among the highlights for us were Valencia based Sagen Ceramics, Omelette-de with their nice collection of accessories and mirrors and Raúl Laurí who under the name Decafé creates objects from left over ground coffee.
But as ever, don't take our word for it. What do we know? Check it our yourself!
Reset Design - New working models runs at Spanien-Kultur in the Spanish Embassy, Lichtensteinallee 1 10787 Berlin until Thursday July 31st
