Function, Form, Quality, 1967–72

Function, Form, Quality was a recurring exhibition organized by East Germany’s Central Institute for Design (later the Office for Industrial Design) from 1967 to 1972. Offering a comprehensive survey of East Germany’s design achievements, it also toured across the socialist world with stops in Warsaw, Sofia, Moscow, Bucharest, and Bratislava, among others. Its objects, photographs, and models covered the areas of home and leisure, work and transport, and education. Other sections looked at East Germany’s arts and crafts as well as the evolution of high-quality products in Germany from 1900 to 1933, with items from the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau, the German Werkbund, and the Bauhaus. It was not only the exhibited items that drew a great deal of attention, but also the unique exhibition design and its graphic elements.
The Central Institute for Design also published a book in 1967 with the same title as the exhibition, subtitled ‘on the problems of a theory of design’. The author of this foundational book was Siegfried Heinz Begenau (1920–2009). Its cover shows the linden-leaf aluminium façade created in 1966 for the Polish Embassy in Berlin by the metal artist Fritz Kühn (1910–67).