Vienna – A City Full of Design

The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is an annual public design festival taking place in various locations of the Austrian capital. It is the brainchild of Vienna-based “Neigungsgruppe Design” (Lilli Hollein, Thomas Geisler, Tulga Beyerle), who are also responsible for the curatorial concept. Revealing creative processes and exploring the interaction of people and objects are core elements of the festival concept.

International Design in Vienna
During the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, the city becomes a platform and showcase of design. In cooperation with designers from all over the world, Viennese museums and companies, the festival offers a variety of venues and approaches specific to Vienna. The festival sets out to be “international but local,” with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe. The invitation of designers from the region fosters the long overdue networking process in the field of design.

Discussing and Celebrating Design Neigungsgruppe Design doesn’t limit the notion of design to the aspect of just “shaping” individual objects: Design has always been and still is an important field in the production of culture. The festival shows that design shapes our material culture, our every-day life and our consumer world. At the same time, it influences our lifestyles and fashions and most fundamentally our aesthetic sense and judgements. Therefore, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK has based its mission on both the celebration of design and on its critical examination.

Time for Experiments
The festival aims to reveal creative and production processes and encourages experimental work on the spot. It also presents and promotes design that in the first instance withdraws from the scheme of utility value in order to create awareness and pose questions — or simply just to have fun. The exploration of materials, mood values and the interaction between people and objects is at the centre of design and has its assured place at the festival.

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK: Programme Highlights
The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, now in its forth year, is Austria’s most important international design festival. From October 1-10, 2010, it will bring some of the best designers of our time to the Austrian capital, among them Stefan Sagmeister and Konstantin Grcic, while simultaneously fostering the talents of tomorrow. The festival is diversified in content – comprising positions of product design, industrial design, and furniture design – with an abiding interest to cooperate with the flourishing design scenes of Central and Eastern Europe, and certainly beyond.

Among the international participants of this year’s festival are formafantasta from Eindhoven, Rikkert Paauw and Jet van Zwieten from Utrecht, Studio Makkink & Bey from Rotterdam, Claesson Koivisto Rune from Stockholm, Mark Braun from Berlin, esterni from Milan and many others. With exhibitions, venue-specific installations, theme specials, talks, and, of course, plenty of opportunities to party and network, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK is not only an attraction for the international design scene. It most explicitly aims to appeal to a wide public audience in Vienna, including international guests: In cooperation with many partners – museums, galleries, and companies – the whole city becomes a platform and a showcase of design. VIENNA DESIGN WEEK doesn't have the character of a trade fair but instead offers a variety of venues and approaches specific to Vienna.

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK “Passionswege”
The PASSIONSWEGE are a design trail through Vienna and an important programme point of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. Designers or design teams, both from Austria and abroad, are invited to create objects and site-specific installations on the premises of old-established Viennese businesses. Together, they experiment on the spot, make use of workshops and intervene on the premises. The “Passionswege” also lead to parts of the city not especially known for their design affinity.

Guests in 2010 are: Mark Braun (GER), White Elephant (A), formafantasma (I), Jessica Hansson (S), Annette Hinterwirth (A), kim+heep (A) Julia Landsiedel (A), Nicolas Le Moigne (CH), Daniel Posta (CZ) and vandasye (A).

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Talks invite some of the most challenging designers of our time to give lectures on their specific approach and personal experiences. Stefan Sagmeister will talk about “things he has learned in his life so far”, followed by Konstantin Grcic und two not less interesting international speakers (tbc).
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Debut presents young Austrian designers in an exhibition in collaboration with James Dyson Award and James Dyson Foundation.

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Laboratory invites emerging graphic and product designers to develop and present a project on-site at the festival’s headquarter at KUNSTHALLE wien. Like last year, it is curated in collaboration with Austrian graphic designer Erwin K. Bauer.

In addition, talks and panels will address a professional audience.

Guests in 2010 are: Tomás Alonso (UK), Cornelia Hess (CH), Sarah Kueng & Lovis Caputo (CH), Adrian Merz (CH) and Pixelgarten (GER).

VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Carte Blanche acknowledges ambitious projects which show the vigour of design apart from its commercial purposes. This year, projects include, amongst others: a temporary wine tavern (“Heuriger”) by young architects bindermayer (Corina Binder and Suse Mayer) and an intervention by Rikkert Paauw and Jet van Zwieten from Holland, supported by Viennese design collective breadedEscalope. They will implement their project “FOUNDation” in open space that actively involves the inhabitants of Vienna’s 17th city district – an area very much in need of ideas to improve quality of life.