Designing for socialist need: industrial design practice in the German Democratic Republic

How does industrial design operate outside of capitalist consumer culture?

This volume assembles a detailed picture of industrial design practice in the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR).

Drawing on much previously unexplored material from a wide variety of sources, it not only maps out some of the ideological, institutional, and economic contexts within which GDR design functioned, it also critically reconstructs the designers' aims and perspectives in order to argue that they shared a profoundly socially responsible approach to design.