Holger Elers Studio Pieci Ezeri Noliktavas iela 5 1010 Riga Latvia Phone: +371 7323939 Fax: +371 7323937 E mail: info@5ezeri.lv "I am Holgers Elers, born in Riga, living in Latvia. I am an associate professor at the Design department in the Latvian Academy of Arts, co-owner and creative director in the “Pieci ezeri” (“Five lakes”) company. Before speaking about the situation of design in Latvia you should know some history, Actually, design as it is has existed from pre-historian times.There were such known design representatives at the beginning of the previous century in Latvia like Valters Zapa who invented and designed the “Minox” camera. Of course, history brought war to our country, then the Soviet invasion, with the subjection of manufacturing to the Soviet system. The situation was the same in design. After the Soviet invasion, manufacturing felt apart in a way and the situation of design became fairly complicated. It is now 15 years since we regained independence, and manufacturing has slowly grown, as has the situation in design. Considering the situation of the development in manufacturing in Latvia today, there are lots of areas where it is hard to express oneself as a designer (because of the passivity of the manufactures) (The main fields where there are some movements) are, let’s say, manufacturing of furniture, manufacturing of small household objects, engineering, as well as most designers being occupied with advertising, making and producing advertising units. I am afraid there has been no competition as such between designers for the last 50, 60 years, because of the Soviet system, where design was planned for each product and this excluded any creative competition. Also today the experience with manufactures is too insignificant to be able to talk about any “design boom“ and no brilliant design objects will appear, because manufacturers who can succeed in Europe are not interested in design. (In the market) they can only compete with a cheap labour force and the products they make are cheaper, but of course also with good quality. Changing their system and taking part in the EU will surely change many areas of life and the situation in design too, but it is hard to forecast how this will happen exactly. I do not think that we will be big rivals for the EU and America in the near future. Considering that we cannot rival them, I don’t know whether those big companies will endanger us. These things are completely different. Of course, I admit that some designers will jump at the chance to work in foreign countries, big design companies, or get into the European movement, but I don’t think this will happen in America. It is possible that some Latvian designers’ names will appear in Europe in the near future. There were no design shows as such in Latvia. I hope maybe there will be some but till now there have only been manufacturing shows including the accomplishment of local designers."