Programms – Partners – Players
As before, almost all of the programme highlights have free entry.
There are eight programme formats and several focal points, and we will outline the festival contents accordingly in this text. You will receive your copy of the generally valid Festival Guide at the end of August. However, if you’d like to already get into the festival spirit or delve into a particular format more deeply, just click through the website, with its texts and photos from past years, the growing section about the players, and David Payr’s successful photo festival campaign.
FOCUS DISTRICT AND INFO POINT Leopoldstadt, Vienna’s second district round about the Volkert and Alliierten [Allied] Quarters and Taborstrasse, is this year’s focus district. From 30 September to 9 October, the new Vienna design destination ‘Stilwerk’, located at the beginning of Taborstrasse and Praterstrasse in the Jean Nouvel Tower, will be the site of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK LABORATORY, the LABORATORY Talks, an exhibition of winners of the Recycling Design Prize, and the festival headquarters – the Meeting Point.
LABORATORY AND LABORATORY TALKS In the LABORATORY – a temporary studio – this year four designers/design offices chosen by the curators Erwin K. Bauer and the Neigungsgruppe Design (Tulga Beyerle and Lilli Hollein), will be busy. Under the title ‘copyright copyleft’, these design creators will be operating live, giving a glimpse into how they work. They will be delving into the fascinating subject of intellectual property between plagiarism and open sources in the areas of product and graphic design: Adam Wehsely-Swiczinsky – AWS (A), Hakobo Studio (PL), Tomek Rygalik (PL), and Thomas and Martin Poschauko (D). Comments and participation from the public are welcome in the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Laboratory. Every evening at 17.30, there will be a LABORATORY Talk with the participating designers and various topics of discussion.
The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK LABORATORY is made possible through the generous support of ABSOLUT VODKA.
EDUCATION AND GUIDED TOURS Here, at the gateway to the second district, is also the starting point for the Guided Tours. They offer the possibility of experiencing the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK on foot or by bus from various angles. These are guided tours with different routes, conducted in German and English by city guide and architect Gabriela Steiner-Schaffetter of Wienkultours.
Special Tours of festival stations and studios are also offered by the AzW [Vienna Architecture Centre] with their collaborative project ‘Designsafari’ and the magazine for young people Das Biber, with a focus on design from Poland for a young migrant audience. ‘design°mobil’ is offering workshops for our younger visitors (form 3 to 10 years) Sunday morning at 10 o’clock at Stilwerk. The Education programms are made possible by the kind support of the impulse I AWS & evolve I bmwfj.
GUEST COUNTRY POLAND AND EXHIBITION The guest country this year is up-and-coming Poland, which holds the presidency of the EU Council since July. The Polish design scene will be presented with the exhibition Just a thing, curated by Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka, at the Heilgenkreuzerhof – an exhibition space of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna’s first district – and will be flying the flag in all of the other programme formats.
PASSIONSWEGE This leads us to another focal point for the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK: the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK ‘PASSIONSWEGE’. The Passionswege invite designers and design teams under certain terms and conditions to work at and with selected Vienna firms and manufacturers and to exchange ideas with them. As a result of this dialogue, within a short fixed period of time emerge works, installations, and sometimes products that are shaped by the experimental nature of the format. This year’s tandems are as follows:
The native of Spain and Londoner by choice Tomas Alonso will be linked up with a firm steeped in tradition, the Wiener Silbermanufaktur. The Canadian Philipp Malouin will be joining up with the glass and chandelier manufacturer J. & L. Lobmeyr. The native Slovak and instructor at the University of Art and Design Lausanne (ECAL) in Lausanne Tomas Kral will be working together with the Vienna hat manufacturer Mühlbauer. Ulli Bude, from Berlin, who likes to come up with solutions for everyday life, will be having an exchange with the jeweller A. E. Köchert. LucidiPevere, the design studio located in Udine, is going to create something with WOKA Lamps. The two Polish designers Anna Łoskiewicz and Zofia Strumiłło-Sukiennik from bezaproject will be let inspiration come from the fantastic wallpapers and fabrics of the French upholsterers Atelier Telliez, with their shop in the Grosse Pfarrgasse. Patrycia Domanska, an Austrian designer of Polish origin, will be collaborating with the ‘dirndl’ [ladies’ folk costume] experts from Trachten Tostmann. The Austrian designer Hermann Trebsche has the good fortune of being able to live it up in the world of party decorations with the large importers Ballons & Ballons. _ The young Austrian designer Konstantin Schmölzer, with experience in New York City and studies at the famous Design Academy Einhoven, will be taking a journey of discovery with garden expert Verdarium at Stilwerk.
The Passionswege are made possible by the kind support of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce.
SOCIAL DESIGN AND CARTE BLANCHE Social design will play an important role this year, especially in the programme series CARTE BLANCHE . The young designer Michael Fetz will team up with the sociologist and photographer Florian Rainer to realise a project on the subject of homeless young people with the Caritas Wien and its programme for the homeless, located in the second district. The two designers, and Viennese by choice will in turn be devoting themselves to the question of maintaining a balance between man and animal in the city. The team from stadtpark, a design collective with Polish roots (Anna Rosinke, Balazs Fenyes und Maciej Chmara) located in Vienna, will be installing plants in public spaces to raise the level of consciousness for greens and food in the area around the Volkertmarkt. The Viennese Vera Wiedemann will be starting with similar ideas to illustrate the art of baking bread in a former bakery. Bread, which is a basic foodstuff, has also become synonymous with the mass production of our throw-away culture. A flurry of flour will overtake the shop floor and envelope the idea with a poetic but also threatening atmosphere. The London designer team Postler Ferguson, currently also artists-in-residence at the renowned Victoria and Albert Museum in London, will turn Café Sonja in the Grosse Pfarrgasse 5 into a very special place: food and drink will be served in the old coffee house tradition, inspired by the legendary Café Drechlser: a pop-up shop that shouldn’t be missed!
The Carte Blanche projects are generously supported by the Erste Bank.
DEBUT AND THE JAMES DYSON AWARD The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Debut, established in 2009, is a cooperative project with the James Dyson Award and the James Dyson Foundation. The format has been developed as a platform for advanced university students and young professionals from the areas of product and industrial design. Ten of the applicants from Austria for the international James Dyson Award will be selected by an independent jury to exhibit their work within the framework of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. This will take place again this year at a very special venue: this time at a former bank, redesigned and adapted by the design team Vandasye, in Marinelligasse 3 in the second district.
SUSTAINABILITY AND COMPETITIONS A competition for further sustainability in the sense of recycling and the preservation of resources is being sponsored again this year by our general partner NESPRESSO. In concrete terms, what they are looking for is a design innovation that will help raise consumers’ desire to recycle and bring the Nespresso capsules into the reuse cycle. At best, the results will not only produce a container, but offer plans for service designs. Five participating projects will be on display throughout the festival in the Nespresso Boutique in Mahlerstrasse in the first district. A further prize is being offered by the Swiss watchmaker RADO in its shop in the city centre. This year’s winner of the RADO Young Design Prize will be honoured for the best show window design. The recipient will be given the chance to realise an installation inside the RADO Store.
DESIGN AND BUSINESS A whole day organised by impulse I AWS & evolve I bmwfj , also sponsors of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, will revolve around the subject of competition and subsidies. The title of the event is ‘impulse insight’ . From the very beginning it was a high priority for the festival to contribute to Vienna in its function as a business and tourist location and to act as an intermediary between the traditional and modern aspects of the city by means of the highest-quality projects. Companies and manufacturers have become important partners for us. The Chamber of Commerce and departure, the agency for the creative industries, as well as the already-mentioned aws, have been our allies from the outset; and WienTourismus has been a principal partner for four years already.
This year departure has again made possible the TALKS in the Künstlerhaus cinema, Speed-Dating with the Experts in the Stilwerk, and the Pecha Kucha Night, with their get-togethers afterwards. Funding from the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber (WKO) has made possible a further study on the economic sustainability of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. The publication Leitfaden Design will be presented during the festival.
PROGRAMME PARTNERS – BUSINESSES Business and design form a crucial alliance and become particularly impressive as programme partners through the participation of designers and companies: as, for example, the installation by the designers Martin Breuer Bono in conjunction with Gaulhofer Windows and Doors in the beautiful Odeon theatre in Taborstrasse. One can experience paper production first hand in the newly opened Fedrigoni showroom in Stiftsgasse in the sixth district. Honey and Bunny Productions will demonstrate with ‘Food Tools’ in a locksmiths in the third district that using a knife and fork isn’t the only way to manage food. The tradition of craftsmanship and the process by which prototypes are developed will be subjects the designers Zachl and Hanserl take up in a shop in the Grosse Mohrengasse in our focus district. Kikkoman is putting a special anniversary bottle of soy sauce on the market – only available in Austria during the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. And fortunately, the sauce will be used at Cooking Happening in the bulthaup kitchen studio in the Opernring.
Furniture design in a form with an affinity with art will be on display this year by the visual artist Gerold Tagwerker at Rauminhalt and in the film 2051 disrupting design, which will be shown at designfunktion. The Prater Sauna, a programme partner for the first time – and not as a club, but as the PS Art Space – will be exhibiting Sauna Chairs by Clemens Wolf. But the gallery of the walking chair guys will be turned into a club, according to the slogan "we make things and songs". They’re going to invite the YAYA Hermann Düne band – but only with works on paper! Maybe the festival visitors will be able to coax them into singing at least one song at the vernissage. Self-referential work is also a fruitful exploration: the designer Thomas Feichtner will be commenting on his own chair at the Neue Wiener Werkstätte with a new adaptation; Martin Mostböck will jointly present with Intier Automotive Eybl a totally new chair out of reusable materials; and Miki Martinek, aided by knitting expert Veronika Persché, will display an upholstered stool at Pregenzer in the Schleifmühlgasse. The Czech designer Petr Novague will also be devoting himself to seating possibilities, presented in the Stilwerk. Programme partner Grüne Erde will be showing a furniture display in their shop in the Mariahilferstrasse with the charming title ‘sinnlich.sinnvoll’ [sensual.sensible], and the designers from copa will create perishable furniture out of ice in a cold storage room: in any case a visit to an exhibition at -25C (-13F) is bound to leave a lasting impression. Guesting in the furniture shop Grünbeck Einrichtungen will be the system furniture producers COR and interlübke, represented by their manager Leo Lübke and designers Jehs + Laub. Thanks to its perfect location – opposite the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK office in the Margaretenstrasse – the Grünbeck shop lends a friendly neighbourly hand, so we are putting on a Design Flea Market on the same day with all the stuff we’ve never really wanted to part with.
From the advertising manuals we know that besides food, animals, and flea markets, children especially capture the fancy of the public. And so this time we will again be promoting a harmonious life together, with things that are fun, useful, and otherwise suitable for children. Kidzroomzoom, a concept developed by the children’s furniture designer Perludi and the Italian gallery unduetrestella, will be presented authentically in a flat in the second district. Hans Taus Einrichtungen will be outfitting a room in the Porzellangasse with ‘Buzzi felt’ on the walls: then there will be no more disturbing screaming heard, for the recycled material out of PET bottles is sound insulating! The design team Esterni will create a participatory intervention in the public space, as they did last year – one in which the whole family can take part; and Hinterland will delight us with a pop-up, walk-in book, Wanderland (also free of charge). The fashion designer Eva Blut will join the product designers and create a special leather bicycle bag, which will of course be presented at a cycling shop in the seventh district. Speaking of children, glass is what J. & L. Lobmeyr is all about. This old, established manufacturer is presenting the bilingual publication Änderungen sind der Zeit vorbehalten to mark the eightieth year of their ‘Loos’ service. The Stamm Concept Store, also in the first district, is dedicating its programme partner contribution to the glass manufacturer Theresiental. Designer Christian Haas designs glas object and presents them in the store.
PROGRAMME PARTNERS – MUSEUMS This year the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK will again be supported by important museums and institutions as programme partners: as always, by the Liechtenstein Museum, where we once more will have the privilege of celebrating our opening, To be seen will be a presentation by Wien Products at the opening evening event. The Wagner:Werk Museum Postsparkasse will be represented with the exhibition Ursprung und Moderne. The MAK will be showing the climax of its large cooperative project with departure, the Great Vienna Coffee House Experiment, and will offer a discussion with architect Gregor Eichinger. Our premium media partner Die Presse is also concerned about our national cultural heritage. Jointly with the Post AG, they have looked for the ‘stamp of Austria’ and invited well-known designers to approach their feeling of homeland in a postage stamp format. The Wien Museum will show the exhibition Gestrickte Zeit – experimentelles Design in its elegant branch in the city centre, the Clock Museum. The Hofmobiliendepot [Imperial Furniture Collection] will be expanding its show on the subject of ‘hygiene’ as part of the festival with an analysis by the designers danklhampel. The Vienna Museum of Technology will be jointly organising with Lichterloh an evening dedicated to a publication about the ‘cube’ clocks, with their four faces.
PROGRAMME PARTNERS – CULTURAL INSTITUTES AND UNIVERSITIES In terms of institutes, this year the Bulgarian Cultural Institute, with an exhibition from the Sofia Design Week in the Wittgensteinhaus, and the Italian Cultural Institute, with a special framework programme of the show Corrispondenze impretive, will be taking part. We would like to thank the Polish Cultural Institute for its help in connection with the many Polish contributions this year.
The Vienna University of Technology will be showing three projects that have been developed in conjunction with seminars – on the subjects of trade fair booths (shown at Stilwerk), lighting, and recycling (at Zumtobel Lichtforum) – as well as a further lighting project, conceived and realised as part of a long-term cooperative effort between Scheinwerfer and the SEG in the Zaha Hadid building on the Donaulände. Educational institutions are represented by the NDU, the New Design University, which has developed a symposium and a workshop to be presented in the Stilwerk. Our alma mater, the Vienna University of Applied Arts, will be presenting a new luminary of its teaching staff: the fine speaker Fiona Raby, from Dunne&Raby, will begin her first semester and initiate her time in Vienna with a project lecture.
PARTIES AND GET-TOGETHERS Networking and having fun is again going to be big at the fifth edition of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. The (by invitation) opening in the Liechtenstein Museum will ring in the 10 festival days in grand style. The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Canteen in the Café Drechsler in the Wienzeile will be open for friends of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK every day for discussion and partying late into the night, with a DJ line up. Special thanks go to our on-air media partner Super Fly. The design collective stadtpark invites you to the Grätzel Fest in the second district on 8 October, and departure to the gathering following Pecha Kucha Night in the Künstlerhaus cinema.
For the very first time, there will also be a wild party to close out the festival – on Friday, 7 October in the MAK (who is co-organizer) – and for anyone and everyone who wants to come (this time there will be entry charged, as an exception). Be prepared!
TALKS AND LABORATORY TALKS The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Talks and the daily LABORATORY TALKS will definitely lengthen the list of ‘must hears’. We’ll be supplying you with names and details the next time in the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Preview, when we’ll also have the final programme calendar ready.
Relax and rest up, because in October you’ll need to be fresh and fit!
Yours sincerely,
Neigungsgruppe Design, Ana Berlin, and Team