HANDHANDPICKED BY – BAKING, SPROUTS & ELDERFLOWERS

Kitchens serve as the center of every party. That also applied in a figurative sense to the Urban Food & Design project HANDHANDPICKED BY, which examined possible methods of urban food production in the beautiful courtyard park of the Festival Headquarters in the former Sophienspital. For this purpose, the project team spent days setting up a clay oven – this seemingly archaic culinary resource, not just due to the smoke difficult if not impossible to overlook, was used to visualize cycles as a reaction to the local vegetation. For example, local bacteria were employed to cultivate a sourdough culture for a no-knead festival bread. The oven was removed after the end of the festival. What remained was the impression that HANDHANDPICKED BY represented a perfect fit for VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2018 as a gathering place of regional delights, as in the old saying about the right lid for every pot.