This was VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2010

113 events at 60 locations attracted around 26.000 visitors – this is the resumé of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2010, which ended on Sunday 10 October. Again, the city of Vienna, this year more visible and “public” as ever, for 10 days turned into a “City full of Design” – with a rich and multifaceted programme that had to offer more than ever before, to design professionals as well as others, and also to the growing number of international design pilgrims who visited the many charming Vienna festival locations …

Alltime-favourites like the „Passionswege“ design trail and newer formats like the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Laboratory, design stars and newcomers, discourse and the pleasure in experimentation and above all an enthusiastic audience – these are the ingredients that again this year made the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK a high-ranking wisely curated festival among the growing array of international design events. After ten densely programmed festival days the Neigungsgruppe Design (Tulga Beyerle, Lilli Hollein, Thomas Geisler) resumed: “Our efforts to conceive a festival with thoughtfully curated contributions that atmospherically connect to our city have been rewarded with an impressively large attendance as well as high international media attention.”

On 30 September the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK started off with a grand opening party at Palais Liechtenstein, where the additional opening of the exhibition “Baroque Splendor and Stainles Steel” represented the starting point as well as one of the highlights of the festival already. With works by the design studios Claesson Koivisto Rune (SE), Makkink & Bey (NL) and Olgoj Chorchoj (CZ) it was the first show of contemporary design at LIECHTENSTEIN MUSEUM. Other “big names” also lit up the following festival days: Stefan Sagmeister, Gijs Bakker, Inga Sempé and Konstantin Grcic were welcomed as speakers at the talk series VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Talks and gave their respective personal answers to the question of “Why Design?”

The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Carte Blanche, a format granting space and attention for designers’ projects turned out to be a further hit: Swiss designer Antoinette Bader presented her enchanting „LacesLamp“; the two Austrian architects bindermayer ran their temporary wine inn (“Heuriger”); the Institute of Design Research Vienna developed new platforms for the adventurous specialist audience; meanwhile, Dutch designers Rikkert Paauw and Jet van Zwieten, with the help of the local community, turned a construction site container into a pavilion and meeting point at the busy Alser Straße underground station.

A real breakthrough was experienced by the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Laboratory, a format realized with co-curator Erwin K. Bauer. Also known as “show laboratory” it is publically accessible all day and has been extended by a daily talk series: “The teams of ‘Kueng Caputo’ and Philippe Malouin as well as ‘Merz und Hess’ and Wagner/Wipplinger have managed to depict the different processes behind graphic design and product design in a very descriptive, vivid way, from the first idea to the final product. Seldom before, the audience has had the chance to observe this in such a direct way”, as “Neigungsgruppe Design” explains.

This year the festival increasingly occupied public space and animated the audience to actively participate: The Milan-based group esterni invited neighbours and passers-by to the communal building of „everybody’s bench“; IKEA, in 2010 first-time festival partner, organized, in addition to other events, a public competition titled “Interior Live” and staged a genuine home-makers’ spectacle at the Vienna Schubertring. Further international enterprises who held invited competitions were Rado and Nespresso. The festival also experienced some very well attended exhibition openings, such as “2000-2010. Design in Vienna” at the Wien Museum, a show that, for the first time, comprehensively sheds light on the youngest design scene of the Austrian capital. Not only the “Passionswege” but also e.g. The VIENNA DESIGN WEEK Debut, the platform for young Austrian designers, but also an array of other events brought the audience to the Vienna district of Hernals, one of this year’s topographic focal points of the festival.

Also the economic sustainability of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK was felt this year: From several co-operations between designers and manufacturers/companies follow-up projects have already been launched; products realized for and during VIENNA DESIGN WEEK do sell well; and last but not least the festival contributes to local tourism and by doing this in the name of design remodels the Viennese image of “cultural heritage” into something much more young, fresh and lively.

Next year, VIENNA DESIGN WEEK will be held from September 29 to October 9, celebrating its fifth anniversary with some very special events.