Time and Place: Young Estonian Designers in the 1980s
Time and Place: Young Estonian Designers in the 1980s

Summary/Abstract: Estonian design underwent significant transitions throughout the 1980s as the global ideological confrontation in Eastern Europe unfolded. Ideas of reality and imagination were played out through creative interventions and within the particular regional context of design at the point of switch-over from one political system to another. The first section of this article identifies the designers who were the key protagonists and considers the concepts of reality and fiction that, along with relationships to time, preoccupied this generation. It discusses the hidden status of these designers within the first half of the decade and their ultimate arrival in 1986. The second section explores this point of breakthrough and, through a sequence of design exhibitions between 1986 and 1993, traces the evolution of design discourse: issues pertaining to the relationships between art and design, socially orientated design values and aspirations to production.

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