The 33rd Design Fundamentals Seminar: Design as early romanticism: Frantz Schubert’s Project

If an irrepressible impulse toward “somewhere else” was a requirement of Romanticism, then in the early 19th century that impulse had yet to be tainted by the colors of nation or ethnicity. Here lies a source of light, pure and intense, reflecting in myriad ways toward later generations. What did Schubert (1797-1828) propose (Projekt/Entwurf) to us?—With insights from psychoanalysis, care theory, and feminism, we wish to examine this question.

Lecturer

HORI Tomohei

Music Advisor at Sumitomo Life Izumi Hall; Part-time Lecturer at Kyushu University and other institutions. Completed doctoral studies at the University of Tokyo Graduate School (Doctor of Literature). Pursues “soft,” cross-disciplinary music scholarship that engages with other fields. Received the 2023 New Artist Prize , Minister of Education Award for Art (Criticism Category) for My Friend, Schubert (Alte Publishing). Co-authored Bach Keyword Encyclopedia (Shunjusha) and co-translated Bons’ Beethoven Syndrome (Shunjusha).

Interviewer

Yutaka Yamauchi (Representative, NPO Donner le mot)

Representative Director of the NPO Donner le mot, Director of Fukushigoto Co., Ltd., and Board Member of Poniponi (Ōmuta Future Co-Creation Center). Doctor of Art and Design (specializing in aesthetics). At Donner le mot, he works on creating places for mutual learning and designing social systems with a view to the coming super-aged society.

Date

October 14. 2025 Tue. 18:00~20:00 (Opening from 17:45)

Venue

Printing Laboratory 2F, Kyushu Univ. Ohashi Campus + Online

*All interested parties are free to attend. If you wish to attend, please apply using this application form (lectures will be given in Japanese only).

*If you wish to participate online, the URL and other information will be sent to the address you entered in the form above on the day of the event. Please download the latest version of Zoom in advance.

Host

Center for Design Fundamentals Research, School of Design, Kyushu University

Co-host: Future Design Course, Faculty of Design, Kyushu University

Contact: Professor Toru Koga

designfundamentalseminar＃gmail.com（Please replace # with @.）

The 33rd Design Fundamentals Seminar（PDF）

Review

Design as Early Romanticism
If Romanticism is understood as a force driven by personal emotion that breaks apart existing forms and systems, then it would seem to share little in common with design. With this assumption in mind, we hold HORI Tomohei’s seminar—but through his presentation and the discussion that followed, that prejudice was shattered into fragments, and among those fragments, new thoughts began to circulate throughout the room.

Hori introduces Friedrich Schlegel as a key theorist who defines the Romantic movement. What Schlegel calls Romantic irony refers to a divided consciousness that recognizes how the self—though it strives to transcend the mundane—is itself tainted by worldliness. Even as the ground beneath one’s feet gives way, this very fissure and contradiction drive the heart to gather and connect fragmentary things. One longs to embrace the world through love and to give it meaning, yet such attempts are destined to fail, leaving only broken forms behind. The Romantic path, then, is one of wandering—a continual process of fragmentation.

According to Hori, however, this wandering path is also a solitary one, and yet it eventually becomes absorbed into the nation or ethnic collective. There, meaning and form fuse inseparably, and Nationalism arises—a force that symbolizes an organically unified whole.

YAMAUCHI Yutaka, the discussant for the session, noted that before Romanticism was subsumed into nationalism, it was characterized by informal, fluid circles of association. He compared this to the dynamics of caregiving, where residents and staff support one another by sharing “true feelings” that cannot be publicly expressed. Within such intimate, fragile relationships, individual emotion remains barely sustained. This, Yamauchi suggested, resembles the relationship between Schubert’s various musical forms and the convivial gatherings known as the Schubertiade that surrounded him.

Quoting Schlegel, Hori reminded us that the “undertaking” of art and music is “a fragment brought from the future” (Athenaeum Fragment 22). Those bound together by the erotic impulse of pursuing something unknown have no fixed purpose and no certainty about tomorrow. Perhaps it is precisely from such an unknowable future that new forms spring forth like water from a well. In German, Entwurf or Projekt—terms meaning “undertaking”—literally signify “throwing something forward,” that is, design. If so, then Romanticism as design would describe a logic of searching without knowing one’s goal—a passion sustained by the “friendship” of those nearby, through which the wandering path is continually renewed. The main theme is not predetermined; rather, its very absence allows multiple living secondary themes to intertwine and generate new meaning.

The movement of Romanticism, then, can be seen as a rhythm of crossing and repeating opposites: form that resists crystallization, the establishment and negation of form, evolution toward the human and regression toward the animal, disciplined order and unbounded play, advancement toward trained ability and retreat toward formless power. This generative logic is the very same that MUKAI Shutarō discerned in Goethe’s botany as the logic underlying the genesis of design.

Indeed, Romanticism and design may seem incompatible. Yet the generative logic that Hori finds within Schubert may in fact be the very methodology—and even the central value—at the heart of design itself.

(KOGA Toru)