RADO MOVING MATERIALS 2026 — Vienna Design Week

Architecture of Time

Time, movement, and materiality lie at the heart of the long-standing collaboration between the Swiss watch manufacturer Rado and VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. Together, both partners actively support emerging design positions and experimental creative approaches.

In 2026, this partnership continues with the RADO MOVING MATERIALS competition. From March to August, six motion designers are invited to develop animations produced specifically for the videowall of the Rado Boutique in Vienna, responding to this year’s theme, “Architecture of Time.” Their works explore temporal structures, rhythm, transformation, and the visual translation of motion.

All six contributions will be presented during VIENNA DESIGN WEEK at both the festival headquarters and the Rado Boutique (Kärntner Straße 18). The festival will also announce the recipient of the RADO MOVING MATERIALS Award 2026.

Participants 2026:

Maximilian Prag
Alessa Wolfram
Liza Borovskaya-Brodskaya
Thomas Albdorf
Diana Bobb
Simon Hundsbichler & Jonas Nath

FOLGE 1: Maximilian Prag

refresh-rate rituals (star time to screen time)

In their video work Maximilian is treating time as both physical and metaphysical material. From deep sea internet cables navigating our faster than real-time social media timeline to planetary timescales of erosion and decay. Combining both human and non-human time-forms (lines, cycles, spirals, liminal, seasonal) they use time as a material for world building. In their CGI approach they use (de-)generative algorithms together with digitized archival matter in form of 3D scans to bridge tangible with intangible matter representing an open dreamscape of realities.

The video shows their research into time as a fourth dimension and visualizing time as cause and effect, but also the act of recording or experiencing time itself as a moving material. Time is treated not as a linear progression, but a flow measuring itself as it streams in and out of consciousness.

Maximilian Prag (they/them, *1997, Linz) is an interdisciplinary artist and designer testing contemporary visual and new media culture. Working with new media technology in between visual communication and art, they create new formats of digital representation, virtual worlds, digital generative imagery and multimedia installations.