| Abstrakt: |
We can consider the uniqueness of the exhibition Design Forum 2024 to be twofold or biunique because its specificities are interconnected. The first is that the event was held in two places, in two different formats. The second specific feature is its inherent characteristic since it consists of student work. It was no novelty because Design Forum celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this year. On a representative sample of school projects, Design Forum 2024 demonstrated the trends that students reflect in their work. We can divide the presented works into five categories. In the first category, there were projects that had the support of practice; that is, the assignment came from the manufacturer who provided the know-how, and therefore, the projects were made in a highly professional manner in good quality and generated potential commercial interest. An example of such practice was the collaboration of the Industrial Design Studio of the University of Fine Arts in Bratislava (AFAD) students with the company TON on designing dining chairs and their various variants. The students worked on the design of the chairs through consultations, visits to the TON production halls, and their own research. The project had the chance to develop from drawings and models on a 1:5 scale to functional prototypes that the students realized in the school environment. The second category was a group of projects that lacked support of practice, i.e., they were in the form of non-functional prototypes or 1:1 models in a design that the designers managed on their own but could generate commercial interest through cooperation with practice, as the design focused on a combination of aesthetics and functionality. An example of this approach is the project of furniture made of flat material without glued joints at the Interior Design Studio of AFAD. The goal was to design furniture that could be easily disassembled without using tools. The third, relatively large thematic group consisted of objects, especially furniture objects designed following the principle of Do It Yourself. Schools from all three participating countries, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland, collaborated on the project called “hOBI.” The name originates from combining the word “hobby” with the name of a wellknown store with building materials. The results presented covered a wide range of designs, from rational ones that could be developed to a highly professional level to artistically rendered objects that were a one-time response to the theme and were not planned for further development. The fourth category could represent an experimental design that was presented with visually interesting, not easily grasped material, shape, and technological experiments. These works were by-products of applied research and had the ambition to present current possibilities and development tendencies rather than finished works intended for the end user. The last fifth category consisted of small aesthetic objects balancing on the borders of artistic, experimental, and functional design. Their philosophical and commercial potential represents a certain balance. By their nature, they are primarily intended to complement a more serious whole, so there is no need to evaluate their communication form critically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
