The ground floor of the Festival Headquarters in the Amtshaus Theresienbadgasse was home to a number of exhibitions from our Guest Country Switzerland. In SWISS CRAFTLAB, two Swiss galleries (one from the East of and one from the West of the country) exhibited wonderful objects from both young and established designers. The galleries NOV from Geneva and Okro from Chur brought an impressive number of designers to Meidling, who personally helped the visitors to understand their work. Hence, amidst the linear yet still playful exhibition design, we were able to jointly investigate the current Helvetic view of “good form.”

In the SWISS CRAFTLAB this included high-quality examples of both traditional and innovative Swiss craftspersonship, such as colorfully woven murals, futuristic dumbbell objects with flip-flop colors, and curiously shaped wooden objects with camouflaged surfaces, which shift between being items of furniture and objets d’art. The exhibition featured work from: Dimitri Bähler, Egli Studio & Matthieu Girel, Sebastian Marbacher & Mara Tschudi, Christophe Marchand, Ulysse Martel & Candice Blanc, Ulysse Martel & Miloš Ristin, Jonas Noel Niedermann, Laurin Schaub, Marie Schumann, and Robert Wettstein.