Furniture

 After the successfull premiere of the design festival last year, Neigungsgruppe Design sheds a light on regional design strengths in an international context, kindly supported by departure wirtschaft, kunstund kultur gmbh, Vienna Economic Chamber and numerous private sponsors.

„Our aim is to bring manufacturers, companies and designers togetherin experimental projects“,Neigungsgruppe Design reveals the core idea behind the annual festival. „This brings about a mutual courtesy and development of trust on both sides that can be used in fertilecommercial and creative long-term cooperations.“ Besides media presence, follow-up orders are amongst the results, e.g. of the last two editions of Passionswege (Paths of Passion): Exemplary is the series „Mutants“, developed by the designer team Polka Products with Riess Email, a traditional Austrian enamel manufacturer. Or Soda Designers, who developed deck chair „Lester“ for Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten that now entered the permanent collection. Here, the product points towards a new direction and proved to be a success in Milano. Expanding perspectives with events of business developers Brigitte Jank, president of Vienna Economic Chamber explains her engagement for VIENNA DESIGN WEEK: “The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK’s main topic is creative activity – on a national as well as an international
level. Protagonists are put on stage, a dialogue between various
stakeholders develops. Hereby, the event provides an opportunity to move things in the long run. We want to continue our support of this
broad publicity for the topic of creativity.”

During VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, Jank takes part in a talk at Bombay Sapphire Lounge on October 4 from 9pm (Taborstrasse 18/12, 1020 Vienna). Together with Joerg Suermann, director of the Berlin partner
festival DMY, she speaks about the importance of creative capitals such as Vienna and Berlin. Furthermore, the president of Vienna Economic Chamber will discuss to what extent an investment in design education makes sense. Participants are decision makers from education, politics, economy and research at the University of Applied Arts Vienna on October 9, 6.30pm. The fresh wind, brought to companies by young creatives in the
framework of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, fuels their maximum performance regarding the processing and development of materials. The aim of departure wirtschaft, kunst und kultur gmbh since 2004 is the support of similar initiatives on various levels. The economic promoter provides several programme entries for VIENNA DESIGN WEEK: The departure design talk, moderated by departure’s CEO Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, hosts Antenna Design from New York. Japanese designer Masamichi Udagawa and his Austrian colleague Sigi Moeslinger from Antenna Design already designed products for Yamaha, Apple, IBM and Sony. They will talk about design between artistic intervention and industrial design at OFROOM on October 6, 9pm.

“Thanks to VIENNA DESIGN WEEK, active exchange and direct networking takes place. It is important to learn from the experience of others and broaden one’s own horizon. For this reason, we offer events as the departure design talk or departure expert-speed-dating, thus trying to pave the way for young designers and prospectiveentrepreneurs“, Christoph Thun-Hohenstein explains his company’s strategy.
At departure’s second expert-speed-dating start-up, entrepreneurs can get a first advice from experts at the University of Applied Arts on October 9, 5pm. For one symbolic Euro they get a 15-minuteconsultancy by entrepreneurs, PR professionals or law experts. At the following Pecha Kucha Night presentations are fast and to the point. Lectures on design, architecture and fashion provide an insight into Vienna’s creative scene. The rules of Pecha Kucha – meanwhile a global format – are easy: every party is allowed to 20 Powerpoint-
Slides, 20 seconds each, to present his or her project to the audience. Thus, 6:40 minutes are over very soon. Erste Bank, one of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK’s supporters, boosts the development of cross-border creative networks, especially with its “Kontakt” programme. The long-term investment of Erste Bank in cultural landscapes of Austria’s eastern neighbouring states also enables VIENNA DESIGN WEEK to exchange and network. For this reason, Erste Bank became an additional partner of VDW and adopted the design safari. The new format was developed by Neigungsgruppe Design in cooperation with Architekturzentrum Wien. While travelling to Bratislava (October 5) and Prague (October 10-12), participants can feel out other design scenes, socialise and take a breath of fresh air far away from Vienna’s festival turbulences. An application for Bratislava is possible on
short notice, the deadline for Prague is October 6 (www.azw.at).