As part of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2025, Frankfurt-based designer Kai Linke meets the Viennese woodcarving workshop Stadlhofer – a place where Alpine craftsmanship is brought into the present day. Together with Franz and Andrea Stadlhofer, Linke delves into the world of chip carving, flat carving, and relief carving, discovering a craft deeply rooted in rural tradition.

This encounter gives rise to a series of houses formed from stacked wooden boxes. Their facades consist entirely of carved ornaments. Each floor is dedicated to a different technique or ornamentation, each level telling its own creative story. The rich collection of the carving workshop has been reinterpreted: Scaled and condensed, it reveals the craftsmanship’s finesse in an unusual dimension and composition.

The carved surfaces refer to their place of origin, building bridges between material, craftsmanship, and provenance and opening up new perspectives on the diversity of carving. The stacked box is transformed into a symbol of the urban: Stacked on top of each other and crowned with lid-like roofs, it becomes a house – and the houses become an abstract city consisting of knowledge, diversity, history, encounters, and the dialogue between craftsmanship and design.

Visitors are invited to transfer, interpret, and take away the carved ornaments. Each impression thus becomes a personal contribution – a piece of the city, a part of the community