Interview Gerald Böse

Foto: Gerald Böse, Koelnmesse

Title: Cologne as a Design Location in the mood for change

As a design city, where does Cologne stand in the year 2011?
That’s not an easy question to answer. Depending on your understanding of design, you can see Cologne as an extremely exciting place for design or more of a classic location. In terms of spectacular, lifestyle-savvy product design, Cologne doesn’t play a very conspicuous part in the scene, apart from the Cologne Design Week event in January. I admit that people are inclined to reduce the role of design to the production of beautiful objects, especially when, as in our case, everything has revolved around furniture for years on end. But the imm cologne is now an extremely diverse interior design fair that is becoming more and more complex. And many creatives and creative service providers have positioned themselves around it, from every design-related discipline you can think of – from a material archive to multimedia performances all the way to a design gallery. These days design is actually a lot more about the shaping of thought processes, of public perception or digital products, it’s about interdisciplinary work. And in that respect Cologne provides a good infrastructure of self-organised designers, design agencies and institutions like the regional design network KölnDesign. But if you’re asking me about the imm cologne, I can only say that, in 2011, things are looking very good for us as far as the representation of international design is concerned. We have won back some strong brands from Italy, and with Pure Village we have developed a new, interdisciplinary format for the presentation of interior design ranges and furnishing concepts that provides scope for diversity and gives both less commercial ideas and established brands a fully integrated place at the heart of the imm cologne. And something else that’s just as important: thanks to closer collaboration, the links between the trade fair and the city – the “Passagen” programme, the DesignPost and the institutional organisers, for instance – are getting better every year.

What might this development lead to?
I think the trade fair and the city will grow even closer together. The exhibition centre’s geographical closeness to the city centre is a trump card that we could make even better use of. If the networking of all activities to the benefit of Cologne functions optimally, anything is possible. And because the design scene in Cologne is young and diverse, Cologne has huge potential for the future. Then the imm cologne might just be one of several crowd-pullers, and therefore if you like the beacon that sends the first design signals in winter. And to ensure that design has a broad basis in Cologne, there are initiatives like the Design Lounge Köln that was founded this year by the KISD and other institutions from the world of business and culture like the Rotonda Business Club and the Museum of Applied Art. The more who pull together the better.

 


In the interview Gerald Böse talks about:

 

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