NEWS 6/2023

Urban Food & Design
The City as a Resource

Urban farming and production, local and social relationships as well as conceptual hospitality and innovative approaches to the circular economy: These topics have been at the center of the Urban Food & Design format of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and Vienna Business Agency since 2018. They form the starting point for this year’s focus: Based on the topic of the city as a resource, processes of change in urban food supply will be initiated in 2023. Creative professionals developed concrete design solutions together with companies from the food sector that are now being presented in the festival.

The city is an endless source of possibilities. Know-how (traditional or up-to-date), land (developed or agricultural), and technology (old and new) play key roles in this process and can be exploited as a means of making metropolitan regions fit for the future. At the beginning of this year, the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK and Vienna Business Agency launched three challenges that address the subject of the city as a resource. The nominated companies Arkeon, City Farm Augarten, and Wiener Gusto defined challenges in their companies for which solutions were sought from designers.

The three selected projects are seen as starting points for long-term cooperation between the creative and food industries and will be shown as part of an exhibition at the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK.

As a second important element of Urban Food & Design, KOMPOST studio and the Vienna Business Agency are jointly curating and organizing the symposium THE CITY AS A RESOURCE. This year, the format is also being enhanced by a sensual performance salon created by the artist Maja Renn and the chef Piotr Matkowski.

Urban Food & Design
Symposium
THE CITY AS A RESOURCE 
KOMPOST studio / Vienna Business Agency

KOMPOST studio and the Vienna Business Agency are jointly organizing the symposium THE CITY AS A RESOURCE in the Festival Headquarters of the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK. The special theme day presents the design solutions that emerged from the challenges in the format Urban Food & Design and deepens the discussion about the subject of a more sustainable urban food supply with the help of inspiring speakers, practical learning, and networking. Profound conversations about soil with representatives of international positions will be just as much part of the symposium as the samples of urban landscapes prepared by Lucia Gaspari and the hands-on workshops that investigate the resource of kitchen waste.

Fri 22.9., 2pm–8pm
Limited number of places
Registration at creativeindustries@wirtschaftsagentur.at 
 

Urban Food & Design
Installation
HEIMAT – THE BEAN, THE CITY, AND THE ARTS
Beyond Projects / Wiener Gusto

Taking up this year’s subject of the City as a Resource, the Vienna Business Agency and the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK joined up with Wiener Gusto to issue a challenge related to the Viennese soybean. Wiener Gusto is the brand, with which the forestry and agricultural departments of Vienna City Council have been marketing the organic products that they grow on arable land in the city since 2022. This means that Vienna is probably the only major city in the world to have its own food brand. 

In addition to wheat, rye, lentils, oil seeds and meat, soy will also be an important part of the product range in the future. In their project HEIMAT, Anke Noack and Olivia Ahn of Beyond Projects address the introduction of soya to Vienna and shed light on the subject of urban agriculture. The focus of the project is the sensory treatment of a crop that seeks to reconcile the wider population with the notion of responsible consumption.

Urban Food & Design
Installation
GROWING THE CITY FARM
Liquid Frontiers / Vandasye / City Farm Augarten

The City Farm Augarten is all about organic growth. Since 2012, the initiative in Vienna’s Augarten has been devoting itself to sustainable vegetable and fruit growing in the urban realm and the low-threshold sharing of the corresponding know-how. Inspired by this guiding principle as well as by Joseph Beuys’s concept of “Social Sculpture” with the exemplary, legendary piece “7000 Oaks”, the Vienna design studio Liquid Frontiers and Vandasye have developed a toolbox containing analog and digital tools that enables users to establish and collectively tend offshoots of the City Farm Augarten in new locations around Vienna. A prototype plot in the courtyard of the Festival Headquarters allows visitors to test how this works. Information about further expansion phases is presented inside.

Urban Food & Design

Installation

AMINO FEAST – ALCHEMY WITH PROTEINS

Studio z00 / Magdalena Weiss / Arkeon 

Smelling and tasting, hearing and seeing, touching and holding: AMINO FEAST is an immersive experience with the character of a ritual. Presented in the form of a feast, the installation examines sensory perception as a prerequisite for the acceptance of new kinds of food. By switching the focus from consumers to eaters, the designers are seeking to exploit the effectiveness of taste and sensual experiences as a means of finding answers to the burning questions facing the food supply sector. The table follows the example of historic feasts and invites visitors to immerse themselves in the world of eating with all their senses. The project was created in cooperation with Studio z00, Magdalena Weiss, and the Viennese company Arkeon, which has developed an innovative and sustainable method for producing amino acids from carbon dioxide.