VIENNA DESIGN WEEK NEWS 6/24 — Vienna Design Week

FOCUS: TRASH and Design Everyday

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK group exhibitions on special and everyday objects

With the curated group exhibitions FOKUS and Design Everyday, two festival formats are presented that summarise remarkable objects based on two design qualities: The FOKUS series, established in 2022, brings together international collectible design by up-and-coming designers and focuses on special objects. The third edition of FOKUS is compiled by guest curators Anton Rahlwes and Nina Sieverding and is dedicated to the theme of trash.

This is contrasted by the Design Everyday format. For the eighth time, the group exhibition realised by the design studio Vandasye (Georg Schnitzer and Peter Umgeher) in collaboration with the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK highlights the design of usable everyday objects. A selection of outstanding Austrian product designs will be presented as well as a strictly limited VIENNA DESIGN WEEK special edition that can be purchased at the festival: the ‘Fragrance Cloud’. As a continuation of Design Everyday and as part of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, the MAK - Museum of Applied Arts is also presenting the show ‘AUT NOW’, also created in collaboration with Vandasye, with 100 Austrian product designs from 25 years and 25 categories.

FOKUS: TRASH and Design Everyday can be seen free of charge from 20 to 29 September 2024 at the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Festival Headquarters (Landstraßer Gürtel 51).

TOPICS OF THIS NEWSLETTER

FOCUS: TRASH
DESIGN EVERYDAY

FOCUS: TRASH

Is this trash or can it go in the bin?

FOKUS is a curated group exhibition that is shown in the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK festival headquarters and framed by an extraordinary scenography. As one of the festival's core formats, the show enjoys special attention. For the third edition of FOKUS, guest curators Anton Rahlwes and Nina Sieverding have searched for outstanding design objects that move between the ambivalent phenomena of rubbish, trash and the stylising attribution of ‘trashy’.

The group exhibition shows objects that, by their nature or design, deal with themes such as the circular economy or recycling (rubbish), as well as pop-cultural products that are subsumed as trash, and aesthetic concepts that use this trash to create something that is perceived as beautiful in high culture (‘trashy’). Trash describes a spectrum that operates between abstract stylistic form and concrete materiality. Trash can be obvious, vulgar and ironic, but also subtle, intellectual and cerebral. What looks like rubbish at first glance can, at second glance, be material that is just waiting to be reprocessed.

So what treasures and opportunities lie in our rubbish - or what we call trash? ‘Justin the Dustbin’ by Uruguayan-Brazilian designer bruno baietto, for example, provides the answer. The rubbish bin, programmed with the help of Arduino, will be brought to life in the form of a performance at VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and, as a witness to our throwaway culture, can explain particularly well how design changes over the years. Also prominently featured in the FOKUS: TRASH format is ‘Object Tattoo’ by Austrian-Canadian designer Christoph Wimmer-Ruelland. The work is based on a technique with which tattoo motifs can be transferred and engraved into the surfaces of furniture - in this case an old Austrian farmhouse table, which Wimmer-Ruelland will redesign together with three Viennese tattoo artists (Frank Maria, Egor Lovki and Felix Schwendter). On one afternoon, visitors can also have the objects they bring with them tattooed.

The FOKUS: TRASH exhibition also features works by Christiane Deibel, Chryssa Kotoula, Das Rezyklat, Fatma Cankaya, Hannah Kuhlmann, Hannah Mackaness, Heiko Bauer with Lena Rimmel and Ben Matteo Kellner, Julia Bonich, Julian Paula, Laura Mrkša, lebedrakshuka, Louis Funke, Ludwig Albert, Luis Niederbuchner, Lia Raquel Marques, Oliver Telegdy, Peter Schackl, sa: k design studio, studio blass & orange, studiorasley, Thilo Reich, Thomas Waidhofer, Tim Teven and Flora Lechner, VAVA Objectsand Virginia Jakim.

Design Everyday

Design for everyday use

In 2024, the Design Everyday format will be focussing on the design of everyday objects for the eighth time. With a selection of Austrian works, the innovative potential of the Austrian design scene is made visible and it is shown that design criteria such as function, aesthetics, haptics and sustainability are constantly being further developed in line with the times. While it is becoming increasingly difficult to recognise the qualities that give good design its value in an unmanageable world of goods, Design Everyday provides insights into the regular activities of Austrian design studios.

The group exhibition at the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK festival centre features projects by Aberjung, ADAMGEORG, bonpart, Designbureau René Chavanne, Teresa Egger, EOOS, Lino Gasparitsch, design.mikimartinek, mischer'traxler studio, Leo Mühlfeld, Jakob Posch (Aito), Klemens Schillinger, Klara Schuster, studio blass & orange and studio re.d.

Design Everyday was conceived and curated by Vandasye (Georg Schnitzer and Peter Umgeher) in collaboration with the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and realised in cooperation with the Vienna Business Agency.

Pretty fragrant!

Special edition by VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and Vandasye

For the fourth time this year, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and Vandasye are presenting a specially commissioned limited-edition object. On the initiative of the festival, Saint Charles Apotheke, Matthias Zykan and designer Lena Beigel have dedicated themselves to the task of rethinking a criminally underestimated fragrance genre: starting from the emotional image that is not exactly evoked by new cars and scented trees dangling in them, they have developed an odour controversy consisting of around a dozen natural essential oils. To give this reinterpretation of room fragrance a contemporary form, designer Lena Beigel has developed an object that not only emits the fragrance, but also corresponds to it in terms of materiality and aesthetics. The result is no longer a disposable product, but a reusable and customisable dispenser for the car or a small room. The ‘Fragrance Cloud’ will be available from 20 to 29 September 2024 at the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Festival Headquarters. The edition is strictly limited.