Abitare il Tempo, Verona 2002
Industious Designers 2002 "Jews have inhabited time" (E. Loewenthal - Judaism explained to my children)
The Verona Fair - Abitare il Tempo - hosted the first collective exhibition of Israeli design, 'Industrious Designers'.
This was a watershed event in the history design being the first time the diverse trends in modern-day Israel had been collected into an exhibition and shown abroad. Italy, the world centre for design, was the exhibition's first stop, followed by Prague (Czech Republic), Riga and Vilnius (the Baltic countries and Frankfurt's Tendence 2002.
The collection was an opportunity to take stock of the design scene in Israel and ask whether there is a specific, recognisable Israeli design identity and if so, how it can be characterised, what its specific features are and what place it has on the conteporary design scene.
In our globalised world, there is little place for local identities, especially in the design world. However, the comment in the catalogue to the first edition of 'Industrious Designers' 2001, pointedly noted that Israel's very specific industrial landscape has given Israeli design a unique, independent language characterised by strident contrasts.
