Aynsley extended his research interests in post-war design by contributing a chapter on design in Germany and Switzerland since 1945 for the publication L’Art du Design (2013). The project was commissioned by Dominique Forest, Chief Curator at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and presented chapters by world experts on national design traditions in the second half of the 20th century. The pairing of Germany and Switzerland led Aynsley to investigate parallel and contrasting initiatives that expanded his previous research on German design.
He undertook research in the Kunstbibliothek and Sammlung Industrielle Gestaltung, Berlin and Museum für Gestaltung, Zurich. Questions central to the project concerned the contrasting positions of Switzerland, the Federal Republic and Democratic Republic of Germany during the period of post-war reconstruction, and the significant role that design education held in countries associated with highly regarded traditions. Alongside this, he evaluated the part that innovation and creativity played in shaping design as a cultural, economic, technological or moral force.
The research involved understanding systems of design selection and acquisition by major museum collections as both an historical and contemporary issue. In the 1950s and 1960s, the category of ‘Gute Form’ was especially prevalent in these countries for the promotion of design – values being conferred on objects of industrial design by organisations such as the German and Swiss Werkbund. Research uncovered connections, contrasts and competition between the countries in the context of exhibitions, as well as exchanges between individual designers, e.g. Max Bill and Dieter Rams. The essay concludes with consideration of the recent artist-driven design movements and moves towards consumer-oriented design.
Aynsley will develop this comparative mode of analysis of national design cultures and the migration of modernism evident here and in his REF Output 2 as his next major research initiative.