Reports
Nov / 1 / 2008 ¬
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2008 Went International - A Review
This year's VIENNA DESIGN WEEK finished with a chill-out party in the Bombay Sapphire Lounge on Sunday, October 12. For 10 days, about 18,000 design fans came and saw design in a variety of venues featuring roughly 60 events held in numerous locations. One day after the opening party, the installation "PureAustrianDesign IN THE CITY" was on the agenda as the festival's first public event, presenting a huge transparent bubble in the courtyard of MuseumsQuartier, which brought exciting furniture design from the current catalogues of Austrian furniture manufacturers into the city – pointing out the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK's motto of "A City Full of Design".
This second edition of the design festival showed that the internationalization of the festival was much more in the focus of the organizers and got great feedback by the visitors, of course. But...
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Nov / 9 / 2008 ¬
DESIGNTIDE TOKYO for the 4th Time at Tokyo Designers Week 2008
The 4th DESIGNTIDE TOKYO event, which took place in the Tokyo Midtown Hall during the four days of this year's Tokyo Designers' Week, is a design hub and trade show where designers from a variety of fields – from interior and product design, architecture, graphic design, textiles, fashion and art – come together and exhibit their work, making up an unique mix in Tokyo which was worth to be visited.
Starting with the main site, DESIGNTIDE TOKYO 2008 spread all over the city, offering venues as so-called extension sites in several quarters of Tokyo. With the addition of the Marunouchi area for...
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Nov / 9 / 2008 ¬
4 Days of ViennaSelectedDesign at "Tokyo Designer's Week 2008"
This year's "Blickfang in Tokyo" tent, which shared the site with "100% Design in Tokyo" during "Tokyo Designers' Week 2008", was even more colorful in comparison to last year. This was actually due to the colors of the exhibition stands and elements chosen by Blickfang for this year's performance in Meji Jingu-Gaien, but certainly also due to the red color at the central booth of "Vienna Selected Design in Tokyo".
In red were especially the huge letters brought along as inflated room dividers in order to help define the exhibition area, which - read in the correct order - revealed the name "WIEN“...
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Oct / 21 / 2008 ¬
14 Austrian Design Bubbles in Bratislava's SATELIT Gallery
Much fresh air from Austria was to be felt at SATELIT, the gallery of the the Slovak Design Center in Bratislava: On 8 October, the itinerant exhibition "GD2D + PD3D, fresh air by PureAustrianDesign" kicked off in the presence of Austrian Trade Commissioner Konstantin Bekos, representatives of the Slovak Design Center and the curators from JULAND BarcelonaVienna and bkm. The attendant prominence from the worlds of culture and design and plenty of young public inquisitively examined the eye-catching design bubbles filled with air and samples of contemporary Austrian graphic and product design.
The objects of desire were 14 so-called "inflates", air-filled cylinders which showed inside big posters with the imprinted exhibits. Some were quite a challenge: those displaying the...
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Sep / 3 / 2008 ¬
Discover a city full of design at the Vienna Design Week 2008
After a successful premiere last year the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK presents its new issue from October 2 until 12 – more compact, tighter and more enthralling than last year. The annual international design festival has less the character of a trade fair but instead offers a variety of venues, featuring product, furniture and industrial design events, some of them with an experimental touch. International designers present their work and enable people to experience the many-faceted creative work in the field of design. In cooperation with many partners – from Viennese museums to production and retail companies to designers from all over the world – the whole of Vienna will become a platform and showplace of design throughout the ten days. International but localised - whereby this year, with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe, the international element is particularly in the forefront.
Paths of Passion with Viennese Charm
VIENNA DESIGN WEEK has annually returning programme spots such as the Passionswege (Paths of Passion). Ten European designers or...
Nov / 30 / 2007 ¬
Zurich Received Third BLICKFANG Landing of PureAustrianDesign
After Vienna and Tokyo, Zurich was the third landing of PureAustrianDesign at a BLICKFANG design fair this year. Just as the other two exhibitions held by JULAND *BarcelonaVienna, the extensive selection of Austrian design products was very popular with the visitors of this design fair, already long-established in Zurich. Like its counterpart in Vienna, PureAustrianDesign Landing was significantly supported by the austrian furniture industry, which has been fostering the international activities around Austrian design as a partner of the independent platform PureAustrianDesign from the outset.
The 23rd of November, the first day of the three-day fair with 18,000 enthusiastic visitors, was marked by receptions. The launch at the exhibition area was at 13:30 pm organized together...
Nov / 13 / 2007 ¬
PureAustrianDesign at BLICKFANG in Tokyo
From 31st of October to the 4th of November, PureAustrianDesign was in Tokio in the framework of the Tokyo Designer's Week 2007, one of the big design events of Tokyo, presenting a special selection of Austrian design products in the BLICKFANG tent on the Jingu-Gaien fair grounds. PureAustrianDesign, the exhibits and the PadFinder Magazine attracted the attention of the nearly 100,000 visitors, mostly Japanese public. Get some impressions of our Asian experience.
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Nov / 8 / 2007 ¬
PulsTV Reports About Blickfang Vienna and PureAustrianDesign
On 21st of October, the 3-day design fair Blickfang 2007 closed doors recording a great success.
On 19th of October Vienna's private TV-station PulsTV broadcasted a brief overview of the highlights of this year's edition of BLICKFANG - fair, in its show "Metro", featuring...
Oct / 23 / 2007 ¬
Great Success For PureAustrianDesign At Blickfang Vienna Design Fair
The first appearance of the platform PureAustrianDesign with the exhibition "PureAustrianDesign Landing" in Austria finished with a big success. About 12,100 visitors admired high quality furniture and product design from 19 to 21 October at the design fair blickfang in Vienna.
After Prague, Barcelona, London and New York, Vienna is now consigned to the ranks of successful exhibition stations. The next landing of PureAustrianDesign will take place at blickfang in Zurich...
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Oct / 6 / 2007 ¬
Pictures of VIP PadFinder Release Party
The PadFinder Release Party was a huge success with 250 VIP Guests. Under the motto "Finding your way through the night of PadFinder" the wondering VIPs have been waiting for the uncovering of PadFinder Magazine.
The photographer Werner Blazsovsky took pictures of the guests in front of the banner of the cover of PadFinder Magazine.
All pictures (c) Werner Blazsovsky
Oct / 10 / 2007 ¬
PureAustrianGraphicDesign & CzechFriends - With pictures of the opening
PureAustrianGraphicDesign & CzechFriends landed in Rome with a Grand Opening on the 8th of October and can be visited until the 25th of October in the context of Roma Design +.
The exhibition presents outstanding Austrian and international graphic design: This time with graphic design of the Czech Republic, this time in Rome. Allegory for a future without borders and for...
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Sep / 13 / 2007 ¬
Back to Biedermeier?
This year´s Ars Electronica motto „Goodbye Privacy“ has created some uneasiness about how far the transparent human being is already existing.
The celebrations of PrixElectronica started with the words: “Ars Electronica 07 is doing what Ars Electronica is always doing, asking questions.”
All questions and events...
Jun / 29 / 2007 ¬
Veni Vidi Vintage - Re-Collecting Design Miami/Basel
“We are making history,” a representative of New York-based design gallery R20thCentury exclaimed to me with enthusiasm, “finally people seem to get what we have been trying to do for so long.” After a successful launch in June 2006, 22 design galleries spanning the globe from New York and London to Paris, Copenhagen and Shanghai opened shop once again at Art Basel’s spin-off fair Design Miami/Basel. PAD-correspondent Martina Grünewald stopped by and collected impressions from this new kind of design event.
Their united goal: to convince deep-pocketed collectors of high-end contemporary art to invest in a modern lifestyle uncompromised by outdated modes of domestic acculturation. Their sales strategy: to effectively align famed contemporary art with upscale utilitarian homewares on similar claims to witty panache, conceptual complexity, and - desirable singularity. 
From June 12 to 17, 2007 the dramatic concrete dome of Basel’s Markthalle gave shelter to a classic assortment of star items in an internationally burgeoning design market. In museum quality displays, gallerists presented early 20th century Austrian “Jugendstil” side by side with Danish post-war design, French 1950s prefab housing and the multicoloured graphics of bold 1980s Italian furniture. With prices too high to be quoted publicly labels were kept to a minimum, shrouding the exhibits in the mythical imagery of art production. In my mind’s eye I could make out the transfigured silhouette of a perfectly balanced chair, a sculpted table, a dashing sideboard springing forth, fully grown, from the master’s brain, the designer as magical artistic genius.
Vintage meets Vitra and Fresh Fat
However, while successfully feeding from this popular image that has been promoted especially by decades of design literature, Design Miami/Basel also explored future trajectories in product design. Together with the Hoffmanns, Corbusiers, and Kjaerholms of the past century the show introduced new limited editions and offered onsite production demonstrations. 
Trusting that aroused visitors would eagerly set out to experience the brand-new prototypes instead of resting their bones on six Polder sofas generously provided by Vitra Design, the office furniture company mounted an exhibition of images and models illustrating the development of a cutting-edge “signed, numbered and strictly limited edition” of furniture “authored” by fifteen eminent architects and designers from Ron Arad to Tokujin Yoshioka. In German Weil am Rhein, across the border yet only driving minutes from the Swiss fair ground, the proud owners of passports and motorized vehicles or valid bus tickets could explore the talent pool’s material results in actuality.
I almost felt as though Vitra chairman Rolf Fehlbaum was effectively trying to propagate another company offshoot by planting his creative seeds at Design Miami/Basel. By the way, if Vitra ever decides to abandon the world of office furniture and contract design, its factory grounds would convert into the world’s first open-air museum of late twentieth and early twenty-first century architecture. Starting from Jasper Morrison’s bus stop you can meander through and around Frank Gehry’s Design Museum, walk along the cherry-tree lined conference center by Tadao Ando and tour Zaha Hadid’s fire station, Jean Prouvé’s gas station and the production facilities by Nicholas Grimshaw and Alvaro Siza—not to forget Charles Eames’s original office.
Back in Basel, a panel discussion with Rolf Fehlbaum, Greg Lynn, Hella Jongerius, Konstantin Grcic, Didier Krzentowski and the Bouroullec brothers disappointed the expectations of local design students and magazine editors alike. On the one hand, a technical glitch with the speakers’ microphones remained unresolved; on the other hand, the conversation focusing on “the process behind limited edition design” was strangely devoid of insightful reflection by the distinguished participants. Maybe their speechlessness pointed in part at a dangerous characteristic inherent in the socioeconomic dynamics of artistic production: once you made it you have nothing to fight for, thus nothing to say anymore. 
Beyond Vitra, onsite performances explored the possibilities of a desirable connection between the fine arts, canonized vintage prototypes, and contemporary limited editions. For example, Tom Dixon’s Micro Factory allowed design aficionados to partake in the production process of big-name design. Once turned on, his Extrudex Machine squeezed yard after yard of “Fresh Fat,” a red and black thermoplastic sausage that was immediately hand-layered around a chair-shaped chipboard core into fuzzy three-dimensional mesh to eventually sit on when hardened.
Ethics, Ergonomics, and Ecology: Enough to Reinvent Good Design?
Among the many other projects, I would like to mention the one that delivered the obligatory charity appearance art shows like to appeal to. Yves Béhar, HSBC, MIT Media Lab, OLPC, Google, and Linox collaborated on the “One Laptop Per Child” initiative aiming at distributing inexpensive child-size yet universally equipped laptops to children in developing nations.
When I first encountered the laptop without knowing its history, I was truly impressed that somebody had finally come up with the perfect globetrotter’s accessory: small, robust, with a sealed keyboard (no more bread crumbs piling up between keys), an ergonomic plastic handle to carry the thing, a revolving color screen that can be turned into a high-contrast black and white screen for reading in the sun, a wide track-pad on which to draw and handwrite, solar energy—all the latest technology you need for only $100. Wishful thinking, as it turned out, because the laptops are not intended for the free market. The governments of Nigeria, Brazil, Argentina, Thailand, and Lybia have apparently already ordered the first five million units scheduled to ship by fall 2007. 
What will happen to these laptops? Will children or their kin use them? Will they simply sell these alien high-tech gadgets in exchange for other, more desirable goods or will they even be stolen from their users and resurface in a semi-formal second-hand market such as eBay? The project does not mention the involvement of any long-term ethnographic fieldwork to assess local needs; rather, the technology is supposed to be self-regulating by punishing those who do not use it according to the project team’s intentions. The exhibition attendant told me that the laptops would only function within a certain geographic area and therefore lose their functionality outside of everyday school life. I am not convinced and will curiously monitor future feedback on a project that has so far demanded $500 million dollars, not a slight sum by all means, from developing countries for technological innovations that might be more in tune with the ideals of Western computer nerds than the reality of pupils living in the developing world.
Design Miami/Basel efficaciously associated limited edition design with industrial mass production while at the same time explaining the difference as a matter of artificial shortage. The international fair thus revealed a dizzying process of upgrading everyday objects by transforming vintage design circulated in secondary markets into authentic works of art and then arguing for their familial affinity with contemporary design production. I agree with dealers who felt that we were witnessing only the beginning of an increasingly vibrant market place for design as it moves more and more into the moneyed arena of art collecting.
In any case and despite the unwanted side effects that might emerge from a change of identity, in Basel or on eBay we encounter a cultural phenomenon that reconnects local communities on a global scale around a new understanding of modern living powered by second-hand trade. It calls on today’s design professionals to channel the dynamics generated in such heterogeneous market places into novel forms of materiality.
Text & photos by Martina Grünewald
Gallery Yves Macaux
R20Century
Galerie Dansk Møbelkunst counted on Arne Jacobsen, Poul Kjaerholm, Hans J. Wegner & Co.
A whole prefab house by Jean Prouvé was on display at Galerie Patrick Seguin.
The Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein designed by Frank Gehry.
The Vitra conference center designed by Tadao Ando.
The panel discussion.
Tom Dixon’s “Fresh Fat” in action.
Swedish design collective FRONT was elected Designer of the Future. Sofia Lagerkvist, Charlotte von der Lancken, Anna Lindgren and Katja Sävström produced enough life-size polyester horse sculptures to make a harnessed team of four silvery lamp bases.
Jun / 28 / 2007 ¬
So Design Is The New Art?
So design is the new art? Asking this simple question to exhibitors of the “Design Miami/Basel“, they smirk at you, signalizing how naive you are. Or if you´re lucky, you´ll face someone more polite, who would answer with a enthusiastic headbanging gesture. This is what our correspondent Patrick Bartos experienced at the “Design Miami/Basel“ which took place in Switzerland from 12th to 16th of June.
In any case, the question is unnecessary. Design is the new art, better to say so: The other art. “Design Miami/Basel“ seems the vanguard to not only a trend, but a phenomenon...
Jun / 7 / 2007 ¬
Photo Gallery: “PureAustrianDesign Landing“ at New York´s ICFF
"PureAustrianDesign Landing in New York" was a big attraction for visitors and media. PureAustrianDesign literally took the stage of the Jacob K. Javits Center at the 19th edition of the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) which took place from 19th to 22nd of May.
All pictures © JULAND BarcelonaVienna, unless otherwise noted.
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Jun / 8 / 2007 ¬
Photo Gallery: "PureAustrianDesign" Spin-Off Party at "Rubin Chapelle", NY
On Monday, the 21st of May, the “Rubin Chapelle“ fashion store in the heart of trendy Meatpacking District hosted the PureAustrianDesign Spin-Off Party, turning out to be one of the highlights of New York's design week. PureAustrianDesign in cooperation with the Austrian Trade New York invited to enjoy Austria based dj Tom Wienland’s grooves. More than 300 party people came and relished austrian wine, champaign, red bull cocktails and fingerfood.
All pictures © JULAND BarcelonaVienna, unless otherwise noted.
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Nov / 27 / 2006 ¬
„Vienna Selected Design“ presents a choice of design from Vienna at the tourism conference 2006 „Vienna Reloaded “
What offers Vienna and how does Vienna present itself as a destination after the Year of Mozart? This was the main topic at this year's Viennese tourism conference in the city hall on Tuesday, Oct. 17, to which Wien Tourismus invited in co-operation with the City of Vienna and the Wiener Tourismuswirtschaft.
Under the significant title „Vienna Reloded – Lebenslust und Kunstgenuss (Zest of Life & Pleasure for the Arts)“, proven tourism experts, representatives of the cultural scene...
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Nov / 23 / 2006 ¬
Pure Austrian Design in London Showcased More Than 80 Austrian Design Objects
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Oct / 24 / 2006 ¬
British Journalists Travel To Austria to find out contemporary Austrian design
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Sep / 16 / 2006 ¬
Successful PureAustrianDesign Landing Exhibition At FAD In Barcelona
FAD - Foment de les Arts Decoratives, October 27 - November 12, 2005, Barcelona. Following on from the success of Prague, the second PureAustrianDesign Landing show in the centre of Barcelona was a real hit with the Catalan public, attracting almost 600 guests in the opening and bringing broad smiles to the faces of the organisers JULAND BarcelonaVienna, the hosts at FAD and the partners who had travelled from Austria.
Around 70 Austrians were involved in the PureAustrianDesign event, ranging from representatives of the Austrian furniture industry and the Chamber of Commerce, who support the landing of Austrian...
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Sep / 15 / 2006 ¬
Enthusiastic Response to the Fringe Events of PureAustrianDesign Landing in Barcelona
FAD - Foment de les Arts Decoratives, October 27 - November 12, 2005, Barcelona. The workshop for design students at the Istituto Europeo di Design, the “design journey” organised in conjunction with the Austrian Trade Commission Barcelona and a panel discussion featuring prominent representatives of the Catalan and Austrian design scene were all well-attended and showcased exciting content.
Healthy audience and enthusiastic exchange of opinions during the panel discussion
On the first day of the exhibition (Friday October 28), a panel discussion involving...
Sep / 14 / 2006 ¬
The FAD Exhibition Hall Shows More Than 70 Design Exhibits From Austria
More than 70 selected designer items from more than 60 Austrian furniture manufacturers and up-and-coming designers were presented in a relaxing, contemporary environment designed by the JULAND BarcelonaVienna studio.
Visitors could walk around a 350 m² area and find out more about the world of Austrian design.
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