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However, this philosophy also implied an uncritical belief in expansionism: Pumhösl made it clear that the testing-ground for each of the 'alternative' designs was to be somewhere beyond the Western world: outer space, the deep sea or the Third World.
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Many of the design ideas were based on the concept of the individual as a form of nomad, a traveller and survivor using his resources wisely to lead a free and flexible life with the help of multifunctional modular equipment. In the face of such dire prognostications a variety of innovative schemes were devised that flew in the face of the global capitalist economy, and these formed the focus of Pumhösl's 1996 exhibition. These ranged from economic theories to ideas borrowed from the Green movement (then in its infancy) to ideas relating to military technology and space travel.Īt the beginning of the 1970s the oil crisis, the Cold War and the space race brought about a general awareness that the world's resources were limited, and that the future of mankind itself was in doubt. The exhibits were complemented by documentation of other ideas that were particularly influential on the alternative design of the time. This organic construction provided the basis for the design of a variety of objects ranging from oil tanks and space stations to children's toys. and an ensemble of crystalline forms derived from the shape of fat cells. He rebuilt pieces of Functionalist furniture from the book Nomadic Furniture 1, by Viktor Papanek and James Hennessey, published in 1974: a dwelling consisting of a cubic frame of wooden slats, between which sheets of cloth are stretched out as makeshift walls square wooden boards with notches that allow them to be assembled as chairs, tables etc. In his exhibition 'On or Off Earth - Design für die echten Bedürfnisse und die Rhetorik der Alternativbewegung' (Design for the Real Needs and the Rhetoric of the Alternative Movement) at the Grazer Kunstverein in 1996, Pumhösl examined the ways in which this type of Modernist thinking resurfaced in the aesthetics and politics of early 1970s utopian design.
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Pumhösl traces the origins, contexts and consequences of the peculiar blend of idealism and pragmatism behind the image of the Modern architect as a Renaissance man in a society of technocrats - a generalist who can create designs that not only solve specific problems, but that work for everybody everywhere, and improve every aspect of life. This, at least, is the Modernist ethos explored by Florian Pumhösl. Throughout the history of the avant-garde it was a widely held belief that the architect's job, given their alleged ability to think in universal terms, was to find practical solutions to the world's problems during a time of crisis.