USSR–West Germany design exhibition exchanges, 1976–87

For VNIITE, the success of the 1975 ICSID Congress in Moscow greatly contributed to the strengthening of international ties. In particular, it stimulated the exchange of design exhibitions between the USSR and West Germany. The first of these, entitled ‘Technical Aesthetics in West Germany’, was held in 1976 in Minsk with the assistance of the local VNIITE branch. Another large-scale exhibition followed in Moscow in 1986, entitled ‘Beauty and Utility in Design’, was organized by the Design Center Stuttgart. The USSR responded with two exhibitions at the Stuttgart Design Center in 1976 and 1987 — ‘The Soviet Designer’ and ‘Design in the USSR: Tradition and Modernity’.
Though very different from one another, these exhibitions did share some things in common. Firstly, both included audiovisual slide presentations offering insights into everyday life in the Soviet republics. Secondly, each showed the formative years of the Soviet design system, starting with the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s. And thirdly, instead of focussing on the objects or products themselves, the exhibitions spotlighted the methodologies and concepts underlying the Soviet approach to design. In particular, VNIITE’s systematic ‘design programme’ method was introduced as an inspirational innovation. Such cultural exchanges opened the door to subsequent experimental collaboration between Soviet designers and West German companies in the late 1980s, as well as design internship programmes for exchange students.