Dizaina Studija. Telpa Forma Laiks

If we were bold or flippant enough to pose the naively primitive question, “Do Latvians have design?” to a circle of people who are close to culture, I am afraid that in the best instance the response would be amazement, if not an aggressive indication of the negative. We can never regain the era in which “Vefiņš” moved hundreds of thousands of radios along a conveyer belt, and when scooters designed by Latvian designers jauntily puttering over a large portion of the world’s surface (which at that time was marked on the political map in a pink colour – the USSR and the Eastern bloc), when the creative laboratories and artists’ workshops attached to the giants of Soviet industrialisation worked in shifts, not to mention separate design offices worked for the needs of factories, when the young design specialists did not have to struggle to gain workplaces but instead tried to escape being allocated work in manufacturing at “Somdaris”, “Rīgas apģērbs” or some other enterprise. The future of Latvian design can only be different. What could it be like? In the new permutation one can observe a similarity to Latvia between the wars, when a majority of products, in the furniture business for example, were worked on small independent workshops. Only at that time it was possible for the demand to be satisfied by the work and taste of local craftsmen: by comparison today there is a larger emphasis on professionalism and mobility.

The start of the story about Vilmārs Terbets’ “Chilli” is endowed with both romance and symbols. The company rented a workshop in one of the old VEF buildings, at the time when the Latvian industry flagship was showing its last signs of life and still manufacturing this and that. A giant is worth of respect even when it has died: the Dutch installed design workshops in one of the world’s most beautiful monuments of 1920s modernist architecture and industrial heritage, the Van Nelle tobacco factory in Rotterdam (it stopped work as a factory in 1995), which breathed new life into the building. Rotterdam is a renowned centre for world architecture: we, on the other hand, do not have the capacity for such a lively filling of the space; we also do not have a conceptual co-ordinator, because the spaces in the former VEF buildings belong to various different owners. The “Chilli” office, which joined its workshop space a few years ago, is small in comparison to the size of VEF and many former renters at the workshop, which together with other design and artists studios create a small creative organism, although it is spread out the wide spaces of the former factory.

“Chilli”’s description of services announces that they provide “design and interior design”. Terbets, graduate of the Wood Sculpting Department of the Liepāja High School of Applied Art and the Functional Design Department of the Latvian Academy of Art, considers furniture design to be a real challenge, and interior design – an unavoidable component of work, which helps to maintain the business (the “unavoidable necessity” has good results, because Vilmārs Terbets and “Chilli” won the award for “Interior design” in the last annual show of Latvian architecture with their interior for the station building of the Ferry Terminal at the Ventspils Free Port. Also notable are the interiors of “Sulu bārs”, gallery “Putti” (together with Iluta Rode), guest house “Chill Inn”, shopping centre “Cenu klubs”, and a work in progress – “Big Game” gaming rooms). “Chilli” is a four-person enterprise, two of whom work in the office and two in the workshop (all of them have been educated at the Latvian Academy of Art), for most of their production they engage contractors as necessary. The metal workshop is both the production unit for the company, where interior objects are created – semi-finished manufacture and details of furniture and lamps (those which they do not manufacture themselves they order from other sources) – and is also a creative laboratory, in which ideas and ready prototypes are tested. Some original products of the company, which have been released in small series after an initial order, are modular shelving and tables. The office space itself serves as the best “advertising face” for the products – the interplay of metal and glass with the former manufacturing workshop is close to ideal. It is not only taste and the desire for techno which encouraged the company to use an arsenal of metal, glass and plastic – carpentry has larger production costs. But if necessary (such as in the above-mentioned Ventspils Free Port Ferry Terminal) the qualified wood sculptor Terbets is happy to design objects using wood.

One of the most visible events of Latvian design in the recent summer was the discussion led by the prominent moderator, Jānis Domburs, entitled “Will Latvia have Design?” with the participation of two Ministers (also Vilmārs Terbets was invited to represent manufacturers). Amongst other issues, the question of design as a form of identity significant to the nation was on the agenda. Unfortunately when the involved parties unexpectedly began to express their individual suffering passionately at a free microphone, the discussion leader could not hold the reigns and the important problem of identity “fell off the radar”. But the question remains: what is happening in Latvia with the concept of identity which can be created by design? The most important buttons which can activate this mechanism of identity are in the hands of the local councils: the public face of a city is its sign of belonging. Almost every designer who has tried to collaborate with the Riga City Council remembers this experience with dislike: the chaos and lack of coordination which rules the institution is hopeless. In turn, as he is from Liepāja, Terbets has developed a positive collaboration with the Ventspils City Council. The foundations for this collaboration were established when the Ventspils Museum was still being created, for which Vilmārs made the display cases. Next he won a tender for the interior design of the Ventspils Library, a design for the Ventspils Digital Centre and the prestigious ferry terminal, which is in reality the national border. Cooperation is being continued on a design for the Ventspils Theatre: you could expect for work to be sorted according to the financial capacity of the client. However, Terbets also values the competency of the relevant committee of the Council. When will Riga have times like these?

When asked about the situation and attitude of the company which is subordinated to the real estate and building industry during this time of economic crisis, the artist Terbets exhales an emotional “Tragic!”. It turns out that this is mainly from an angle of psychological comfort, because the media ceaselessly advertises negation; in reality commissions have not been reduced in number up until now. See, how: we build reality ourselves in our own consciousness; I hardly think that journalists get consciously entwined in conscious scare-campaigns and manipulation of the masses. But Vilmārs took a long while to think about my troubling question “Does Latvian design have a future?”, while the “film” in his memory rewinds painful rejections from private enterprise, before answering: “Why not? I have a high opinion of myself. But for design to develop, it needs clients”. “Chilli” is part of the back bone of those included in the exhibition of Latvian industrial design held at the Museum of Decorative Art and Design as a part of this year’s Days of Design. Terbets praises both the healthy, non-commercial character of the exhibition and the project “Dizains. Nākotne”, as well as the opportunity for ourselves to view the step on which we are currently standing.