From protest poster to mushroom farming: in its twelfth edition, Austria’s biggest and most international design festival will be showing all that design can be, the themes that motivate designers, and how all this happens throughout the city.
From 28 September – 7 October, a multitude of festival events make Vienna into the City Full of Design. The Festival, headed by Lilli Hollein, fosters a new awareness of design and sees it not primarily in its aesthetic function, but first and foremost as a profound and elementary component of our everyday life.
Vienna Design Week also has a special commitment to the public, balancing the needs of specialists and a broad-based public. On show are national and international projects, positions, creative and production processes and also experimental approaches in architecture and in current design work in graphics, products, furniture, industry and social design.
‘Design is the creative configuration of our everyday life; it serves society, it is also a political act and far more than what many people associate with the word “design”. The diversity, the social responsibility and the options offered by this field have always been the theme of this Festival, which this year has an extraordinary range.’ says Hollein.
Most contributions are produced especially for the Festival, many even developed on commission of the renowned for its curated programme and innovative character, and its endeavour to merge different disciplines – with a special focus on the relationship of design and industry as well as on the promotion of experimental approaches.
Multiple themes take the spotlight for the first time in this year’s Festival: on one hand a special format will investigate the opportunities of virtual and augmented reality in the field of design. On the other, we join forces with designers, experts, activists and NGOs to examine how far design can be both the expression as well as the tool of protest.
In addition, they are working with the Vienna Business Agency on the topic of urban food production and consumption via a programme of talks, tours and other events. Part of the key focus on virtual reality takes place in collaboration with sound:frame, the Vienna agency for audio-visual art.
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