Socialist Industrial Design in Mao Era China and After

迄今为止，关于1978年以前的中华人民共和国的史学对工业设计的历史及其在国家社会关系和日常生活中的作用几乎没有什么可说的。这反映了在中国共产党执政的前三十年里，人们对社会主义物质文化的普遍看法。​这表明，社会主义现代化——上世纪五六十年代欧洲社会主义政权所见证的那种——对大多数普通公民的生活影响不大。然而，即使在物质匮乏和经济紧缩时期，工业设计也很重要；特别是如果我们将这个术语广义地定义为不仅包括官方认可的设计部门和工厂工作，还包括根据工业设计蓝图回收和重新加工现有材料的当地实践。从这个角度看，工业设计成为审视中国政治、技术、材料和人们日常公共和私人生活中的物质文化之间联系的重要场所。​基于来自国际档案、党内出版物、报纸和期刊、日记、摄影、技术手册、回忆录、口述历史访谈以及可能的时代幸存物品的新记录，它将中国工业设计和材料带入了更广泛的战后设计和材料文化历史。​社会主义工业设计的历史是理解当今中国物质文化和工业设计的核心。该项目从两个角度探讨工业设计：物品和用于生产它们的材料。除了精选和著名的社会主义消费品（手表、自行车、电视等）之外，该项目还关注了日常用品，包括椅子、桌子、书桌、衣柜、橱柜、沙发、床单、床上用品、陶器和保温瓶。它侧重于四种中心类型的原材料和工程材料：木材，金属，竹子和塑料。中国工业设计的这种方法将这些物品的社会历史及其日常使用与生产、流通的背景联系起来，并更广泛地讨论原材料供应、材料科学、机械化、物质性，并讨论“新中国”的新美学。该项目强调了不同的个人和团体所发挥的作用，这些个人和团体在艺术学院、设计办公室以及通常位于远离北京和上海的社会主义中国新城市中心的工厂车间中进行设计。它结合了对政府机构中人们工作的探索，比如轻工业部或林业部的办公室，他们负责国家计划和党-国对实物生产的监督。它还探讨了非制度化的适应和工业蓝图的制造、黑市活动，以及材料短缺、供应和紧缩设计之间的联系。该项目将允许PI撰写关于中国工业设计历史的新专著。​该项目将通过与新成立的香港博物馆M+合作，进一步促进大学学者与博物馆馆长之间的对话。

Historiography on the People's Republic of China before 1978 has so far had little to say about the history of industrial design and its role in state-society relations and everyday life. This reflects popular beliefs about socialist material culture during the first three decades of Chinese Communist Party rule. When asked today, many people inside and outside of China will often respond that the Mao Era was shaped by poverty and material scarcity. This suggests that socialist modernisation - of the kind witnessed during the 1950s and 1960s under European socialist regimes - was of little consequence to the lives of most ordinary citizens. Industrial design, however, mattered even during times of material scarcity and austerity; particularly if we define the term broadly to include not only officially accredited design departments and factory work but also local practices of recycling and reworking existing materials according to industrial design blueprints. Seen in this way, industrial design becomes an important site to examine the connections between China's politics, technology, materials, and the material cultures that surrounded people in their everyday public and private lives. The project revisits industrial design during the Mao Era and the early Reform Era, from the 1950s into the 1980s. Based on new records from international archives, Party-internal publications, newspaper and periodicals, diaries, photography, technical manuals, memoirs, oral history interviews, and - wherever possible - surviving objects from the era, it brings PRC industrial design and materials into the wider history of post-war design and material culture. Much has been written about "post-Mao" industrial design, yet this project argues that many of the designs, materials, and manufacturing processes developed during the first three decades of CCP rule, then under Chairman Mao, were used to realise the post-Mao reforms. The history of socialist industrial design is central to understanding material culture and industrial design in China today. The project approaches industrial design from two perspectives: objects and the materials used to produce them. Moving beyond selected and famous socialist consumer products (wristwatch, bicycle, TV, etc), the project looks at vernacular objects of daily use, including chairs, tables, desks, wardrobes, cupboards, sofas, sheets, bedding, crockery, and thermoses. It focuses on four central types of raw and engineered materials: wood, metal, bamboo, and plastics. This approach to PRC industrial design links the social history of these objects and their everyday uses to their contexts of production, circulation, and the broader discussions of raw material provisions, material sciences, mechanisation, materiality, and talk about new aesthetics for a "New China". The project emphasises the role played by a diverse set of individuals and groups who created designs in art institutes, design offices, but also in the workshops of factories often located in the new urban centres of socialist China away from Beijing and Shanghai. It combines this with an exploration of the work of people in government institutions, such as the offices of the Ministry of Light Industry or the Ministry of Forestry, who were in charge of state planning and party-state supervision of object production. It also explores un-institutionalised adaptations and manufacture of industrial blueprints, black market activities, and the connection between material shortages, provisions, and austerity designs.The project will allow the PI to write a new monograph on PRC industrial design history. Several international workshops will lead to the creation of a new online resource - "The Mao Era in Objects" and to a co-edited publication on Mao Era material culture. The project will further promote dialogue between university academics and museum curators through collaboration with the new Hong Kong Museum M+.