With its Festival Headquarters, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK doesn’t just open the door for contemporary design, it also provides a window to a time that we’re in part already extremely unfamiliar with. Some of the design ideas that are inscribed in the Bank Austria’s former office building are now difficult to comprehend. Still – or for that reason – the mirrored structure is a minor icon of the 1970s, a time currently making a comeback, at least in terms of pop culture. The entangled design threads that come together at this place virtually call for an artistic intervention. And if anyone’s equal to this task, it’s Jakob Lena Knebl, who’s not least known for her knowledge about design, her sure hand as a curator, her masterful use of a flea market platform, and her skill at appropriating and transforming existing structures. In coop­eration with Markus Pires Mata, the artist will undertake the design of the window of time into the 1970s, using for this purpose elements of old arts­-and­-crafts techniques, relics of open-space offices, and vintage lamp bases – all of them shot through with parasitic textile shapes.

With the kind support of Kohlmaier, rudolf Vienna, and 6B47 Real Estate Investors.