FOKUS: The Essence of Lightness

“Lightness means being present in the here and now, freeing oneself from the weight of the past and the worries of the future, and approaching the moment with curiosity.” 

– Connie Huesser, guest curator

FOKUS: The Essence of Lightness

The 2026 edition of FOKUS, curated by Connie Hüsser, invites designers to explore lightness as a design and atmospheric quality.

Not as something superficial or decorative, but as a spatial, emotional and material experience. Lightness is an attitude, a sense of freedom. Its quality reveals itself not through spectacle, but through ease of use, calmness, clarity and a sense of effortlessness.

The exhibition seeks works that embrace openness: objects that float rather than dominate, that appear permeable rather than monumental, and that make fragility, movement and tension visible. Between technical precision and emotional freedom emerges a design language that can be soft without becoming arbitrary — intuitive, sensual, poetic and at the same time clear.

The exhibition is interested in positions situated between Freeform Modernism, Poetic Modernity, Soft Radicalism, Minimalism, and a new sense of lightness in 21st-century design.

We are looking for works that:

  • feel light, floating and open
  • work with transparency, tension and permeability
  • are intuitive and emotional, yet formally precise
  • explore fragile or suspended structures
  • create movement rather than rigidity
  • allow openness instead of control
  • embrace flexibility, adaptability and functionality
  • engage the senses and create atmosphere
  • combine technical and poetic qualities
  • are mobile, flexible or transformable
  • balance reduction, minimalism or even controlled unpredictability
  • convey a sense of ease and naturalness 
  • “Less is more” (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) and “Less, but better” (Dieter Rams).

Materials & Atmospheres

  • aluminium
  • glass
  • wood
  • paper
  • high-tech materials
  • reflective and transparent materials
  • lightweight metal structures
  • open constructions
  • mesh, textiles and tensioned surfaces
  • light as a material
  • free or floating forms
  • soft industrial aesthetics

Guest Curator:                Connie Huesser
Cost per accepted piece: € 300,- (excluding shipping)
Application Deadline:      30.6.2025
Jury selection:                End of June 2026
Location: Vienna, Festival Headquarters of VDW 2026
Duration: 25.9.–4.10.2026 (press preview and opening: 26.9.2026)

APPLY

Submit via this link: https://forms.gle/m4UQkPEyEXo2Dc1w8 

  • Images
  • dimensions of a cohesive series of objects
  • a brief text covering your work’s concept and its relevance to the topic
  • a CV


For any questions, please contact: fokus@viennadesignweek.at 

ABOUT CONNIE HÜSSER

Connie Hüsser is a Swiss interior stylist, journalist, exhibition maker and curator. Throughout her career, she has developed a keen sensitivity and intuitive eye for the unexpected. For more than twenty years, she has created distinctive scenographies — bold collages in which objects, materials and colours come together in ways that often anticipate the spirit of the times.

Since 2018, she has travelled internationally with Objects with Love, an exhibition project presenting a carefully curated selection of contemporary design objects, with a particular focus on emerging designers. The project has been shown at ECAL in Lausanne, Design Miami/Basel and the Biennale Interieur in Kortrijk.

In 2019, Connie Hüsser was awarded the Swiss Grand Prix of Design. Since 2004, she has developed concepts and scenographies for Vitra. For the Danish design brand Hay, she designed the colourful smiley sponge Leo.

https://www.conniehuesser.ch/
https://www.objectswithlove.ch/
https://www.instagram.com/objectwithlove/

ABOUT VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is Austria's most important multidisciplinary and curated design festival. Beyond the preoccupation with the design of products, it poses the question of what role the work of designers plays for coexistence in the city and worldwide. Since 2007, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK has been a defining part of Vienna's design landscape. Organized by an independent association, the festival comprises around 200 events and welcomes 50,000 visitors each year.
viennadesignweek.at/en/info/about/ 

ABOUT FOKUS

Design is the conception of objects that are manufactured in industrial series. But this isn’t always the case! In their work, many designers don’t necessarily strive to scale up their ideas but, rather, devote themselves to the expression of an individual object. With the tools of design – but equally those of handcraft and art – they seek out the extraordinary and the poetic, and impressions that lie beyond the normal product cycle. In order to offer a home to this focus on the outstanding object, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is launching the group exhibition format FOKUS. Every year, a guest curator will make a selection from the local and international responses to a specific subject and the selected submissions will be presented in a group exhibition in the Festival Headquarters. A key element of this process is the specially commissioned spatial presentation, which brings together these selected exhibition objects and enables them to fully express themselves.