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Designland. Design in Central Europe, 1945–1989

The ICC invites you to an extraordinary exhibition showcasing post-war design. We will be displaying both iconic designs and lesser-known works, highlighting the figures of designers – both men and women – and letting the objects speak for themselves. Through them, we will trace the history of social aspirations, political tensions and the realities of the Cold War era.

Post-war design is attracting growing interest—not only among researchers, but also among collectors and wider audiences. An increasing number of scholarly publications, together with the presence of post-war everyday objects in popular culture, clearly reflects this renewed attention. Yet exhibition projects that present the phenomenon within a broader, translocal context remain scarce. The exhibition currently being developed by the ICC curatorial team seeks to address this gap.

Conceived as a large-scale panorama of post-war Central European design, the exhibition will encompass the Baltic states, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

It will present both iconic designs and lesser-known works that merit renewed interpretation. At the same time, the exhibition will offer an opportunity to revisit the work of outstanding women and men designers whose achievements remain insufficiently recognised beyond specialist circles. This will not, however, be a conventional design exhibition. Through objects, we aim to tell the history of the region itself: its social ambitions, political tensions, post-war utopias, aspirations towards modernisation, and the realities of Cold War division.

The opening is scheduled for spring 2027.



Curators:
dr Monika Rydiger
Curator at the ICC
Natalia Żak
Curator at the ICC

Soon!

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