Retrotopia. Design for Socialist Spaces

Website retrotopia.eu

This website emerged from the collaborative research and exhibition project Retrotopia. Design for Socialist Spaces, which explores the role and influence of design in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc and the former Yugoslavia from the 1950s to the 1980s. To date, an exhibition and an archive have been realised – both were on display at the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin from 24 March to 16 July 2023 – as well as a companion book to the exhibition. The research findings for the archive are now being made available to a wider and interested public on this website.

For the first time, an exhibition brought together diverse design approaches from post-socialist countries such as Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Retrotopia presented a kaleidoscope of realised and visionary design concepts for public and private spaces. The project was initiated and led by Claudia Banz, former curator of design at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin.

Retrotopia established a new network of curators and institutions, which has been collaborating in a co-curatorial process since January 2022. This includes the co-curators Polina Baitsym, Alex Bykov, Melinda Farkasdy, Judith Horváth, Helena Huber-Doudová, Silke Ihden-Rothkirch, Karolina Jakaitė, Viera Kleinová, Rostislav Koryčánek, Mari Laanemets, Kai Lobjakas, Florentine Nadolni, Anna Maga, Kaja Muszyńska, Cvetka Požar, Klára Prešnajderová, Alyona Sokolnikova and Koraljka Vlajo.

Our institutional partners are the Museum of Utopia and Everyday Life, Beeskow and Eisenhüttenstadt (DE), the Slovak Design Centre, Bratislava (SK) and the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava (SK), the National Gallery, Prague (CZ), the Moravian Gallery in Brno (CZ), the Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest (HU), the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, Kaunas (LT), the Lithuanian National Art Museum, Vilnius (LT), the Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana (SI), the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Tallinn (EE), the Museum of Contemporary Art NGO, Kyiv (UA), the Stedley Art Foundation, Kyiv (UA), the NGO Imago of Culture, Uzhhorod (UA), the Chernihiv Monumentalism Community (UA), the ARWM Cultural Heritage Conservation Fund (UA), the National Museum in Warsaw (PL) and the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb (HR).

Retrotopia. Design for Socialist Spaces is a project of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin.
Director: Sibylle Hoiman
Concept and project management: Claudia Banz
Co-curator of the archive (texts and image research): Mari Laanemets
Text and image editor: Silke Ihden-Rothkirch
Image rights research: Claudia Banz, Ann-Kathrin Illmann
Proofreading (English): Wayne Yung
Translations: Wayne Yung, Elena Mohr, Silke Ihden-Rothkirch
Design and concept: cyan, Berlin
Production: ants and butterflies