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date and location: ongoing - Die Neue Sammlung–The Design Museum; Getty Conservation Institute; TH Köln–Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences; Wende Museum
Plastics have revolutionized the world of decorative art and industrial design. Since their introduction, they have captured the attention of designers on many levels—plastics offer versatility, convenience, low cost and a freedom of design not offered by any previous materials.
Over the last 150 years of plastics evolution—from celluloid, the first human-made plastic, to the most advanced technopolymers—an infinite number of design items in every color, pattern, shape, and form have been produced with plastics using a wide range of manufacturing methods from molding and casting to 3D technologies.
Starting from 2021 a collaborative research project between the Die Neue Sammlung–The Design Museum, the Getty Conservation Institute, the TH Köln–Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, and the Wende Museum specifically deals with the identification of production processes and technologies for plastic materials used in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between 1949 and 1990 for the production of industrial design, their degradation, and possible preventive and active measures. Through a systematic investigation and assessment of a temporally and geographically closed area, the project aims to clarify connections, to identify and characterize materials, and to generate treatment recommendations from the collected data.
