Reconstructing the Nation: The German Institute for Norms

The German Institute for Norms (later called DIN), founded in 1917, ostensibly aimed to first fuel wartime production and later restart the German economy after the lost war. By prescribing dimensions and shapes for mass produced objects, engineers and architects constructed an entire norm system scaffolding their main ambition: to save time and resources as response to the post-WWI scarcity and mounting economic crisis. This paper will investigate the different temporalities and ideologies embedded in the production of these norm sheets. One was the engineer's projective vision not just of future normed objects, but of an entire nation constructed from (and through) fitting parts. Another the interplay between the idea of the norm system as permanent precisely through timely change of its parts due to anticipated technological advancements. And lastly, the norms were a compression of historical and professional layers, filtered through multiple institutional layers of committees and experts, to eradicate subjective authorship in favour of "neutral" technological advancement. The search for the best measure systems, units and representational techniques, an analysis of the attempt to standardize transparency and frictionless production will be foregrounded by the struggle for territorial control and national expansion through bureaucratic means.