Environment and Emancipation through Design

Avant-garde Interventions into the Social Fabric and Design of Spaces and Dwellings in Denmark around 1970

Abstract

Following the students' revolt in Paris in 1968, the role of design was also fundamentally questioned by its younger practitioners in Denmark. The designer and architect duo Susanne Ussing (1940 - 1998) and Carsten Hoff (1934 - ) was particularly inventive and adventurous in trying out and devising new avenues of practice and engagement aiming at a total reform of social life through redesign of the built environment. Their radical experiments drew much attention and were considered as pointing to the future by contemporary design critics. The activities encompassed exhibitions, teaching and experimental buildings. Most notably they arranged provocative multi-sensory exhibitions in established museums, set up teaching facilities outside the academy and did a three-month building experiment using cheap and accessible materials like scaffolding, reinforced plastic tarpaulin and cardboard. In the discourse accompanying the activities of the duo themes of objects and buildings as catalysts of emancipation and empowerment of people predominate.