Preserves by Mathias Hahn

London designer Mathias Hahn added concrete, brass and metal to these coloured glass vessels, which are inspired by making jam.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

Each object in the Preserves collection references a traditional container for storing fruit, Mathias Hahn told Dezeen.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

“The large blue bottle, for example, uses a classic cork. However, this cork does not close the bottle itself, but an inner glass cylinder, which stands upside down,” he explained.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

The vessel with a concrete weight on top makes reference to old containers that were sealed with heavy stones, while the vessel with a metal lid and brass wire around it suggests a swing top for a glass bottle.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

The grey glass container is modelled on a preserving jar but has an additional glass container hanging from its lid, while the concave glass on the green vessel references traditional fruit preserves that were sealed with animal skin.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

The project is a collaboration with Austrian jam makers Staud’s Vienna.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

Preserves was presented as part of Passionswege during Vienna Design Week this year, where we also reported on lampshades made from seaweed and a printer that gets its ink from felt tip pens – see all our stories from Vienna Design Week.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

Other projects by Hahn we’ve featured include an oak chair referencing traditional alpine furniturea set of lamps with hinged wooden arms and a yellow lacquered table, while last year he told us about his work in an interview filmed by Dezeen at imm cologne.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

See all our stories about Mathias Hahn »
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Preserves by Mathias Hahn

Here’s some more information from the designer:


Preserves

An installation of experimental jars

Traditionally we harvest fruit seasonally and start preserving them for the time when no fresh produce is available. Beyond the actual product however, we collect colour, smell and memories of the summer – preserved in a jar. Like treasuring colours of a passing landscape seen from a train window.

Preserves is a series of experimental glass vessels, which portrait the abstract concept of collecting colours. Each one composing an individual chord of shades and referencing a traditional method of preservation.

Preserves by Mathias Hahn

The materials and colours of the actual vessels resemble shades that are permanent in nature, whereas the content is the precious and fleeting idea of a reflection of summer light.

Preserves is a project in collaboration with premium Austrian jam makers Staud’s of Vienna and was presented as part of Passionswege during the Vienna Design Week 2012.

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Still Life with Light by Martí Guixé

Vienna Design WeekSpanish designer Martí Guixé presented an upmarket version of a box of wine at Sotheby’s in Vienna earlier this month.

Still Life with Light by Marti Guixe

Speaking to Dezeen, Guixé explained: ”I am very fascinated by the ‘bag in a box’, which is the system to have wine without having a bottle. So I put away the image of a bottle and I split it into several icons.”

Still Life with Light by Martí Guixé

An oversized cork nestles in the handmade base, and on top are 10 wine glasses and a vase containing the bag of wine with a tap for pouring it out. The two lamps suspended by thin wires represent a grapevine.

Still Life with Light by Martí Guixé

The rug in front represents as the wine’s label and was made by the designer for Spanish rug makers Nanimarquina – watch a movie of Guixé drip-painting the rug in our earlier post.

Other stories we’ve published from Vienna Design Week include lampshades made from seaweed and an interview with artist and architect Vito Acconci.

See all our stories about Martí Guixé »
See all our stories from Vienna Design Week »

Here’s some more information from the designer:


Still Life with Light

For around two years I have been fascinated by the “bag in the box” wine storage and transportation system, not only from its technical qualities but also from its characteristics, a quite different way of keeping, serving and drinking wine; a different perception of it.

Still Life with Light is an installation about the end of the classic glass wine bottle, but keeping the basic elements, the label, the cork, and the vine, also when in form of symbolic representations.

Still Life with Light is made with the Free Port prototype, 10 wine glasses, 2 Cyclops lamps, a piece of cork, fliers, a carpet and a handmade vase full of a ‘bag in the box’ of red wine.

Martí Guixé, 2012
Still life with light
Sotheby’s 
Palais Wilczek
Vienna Design Week 2012

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by Martí Guixé
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Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens with Wittmann

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Vienna Design WeekEindhoven design duo Daphna Laurens collaborated with Austrian furniture company Wittmann to make this duck-like stool and a chair with a bulging backrest.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Stool 01 has a triangular base made from two loops of tubular steel under an oak top, which extends to one side to create a small side table. Chair 01 is made from a tubular steel frame and upholstered with a leather seat and back.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

“Our approach is playful,” the designers told Dezeen. “We start with cutting out paper in all kinds of forms. After this we make compositions like abstract art. Then we choose our favourite compositions and start to fantasise and make interpretations – what could it be? This is where we start sketching from 2D abstract forms to a product.”

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

The pieces were shown at the pop-up exhibition restaurant Eat Drink Design as part of the Passionswege programme during Vienna Design Week.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Daphna Isaacs Burggraaf and Laurens Manders formed Daphna Laurens after meeting as students at the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Other projects at Vienna Design Week we’ve featured include lampshades made from seaweed and printers that use felt pens instead of inksee all our stories from Vienna Design Week.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Other projects by Daphna Laurens we’ve posted on Dezeen include a lamp that looks like it’s peeking through a wall and a set of cork and aluminium containers.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

See all stories about Daphna Laurens »
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Here’s some more information from the designers:


Daphna Laurens at the Wittmann Möbelwerkstätten
As a part of the Passionswege project Daphna Laurens worked with Wittmann. Passionswege is a major focal point of Vienna Design Week. The programme invites young, emerging designers to work with selected Vienna-based firms and manufacturers, exchanging design ideas and producing a tangible outcome, be it a product or installation.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Originally a saddlery, the Wittmann Company with its headquarters in Etsdorf, not far from Vienna, has grown in a hundred years to become the upholstery furniture specialist that it now is ‐ and which has also retained its expertise in the field of leather processing. Precision, exactness and skill in handcraft are the qualities that distinguish the producers and the ‘genuine Wittmann’ products.

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Daphna Laurens chose an explorative and intuitive approach for their collaboration with Wittmann. Instead of taking a product representative of the producer as their starting point, the designers gathered colour and mood images in the inner world of the production site and translated these into what was at first an abstract repertoire of forms (bed or sofa? side table? Or none of these?)

Chair 01 and Stool 01 by Daphna Laurens

Out of puzzle of variation options and ways of seeing things ­‐ and in a communication process between producer and designer -­ the eventually pieced it together and produced two furniture designs of striking character and with strong personality.

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Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

Vienna Design Week: London-based designer Julia Lohmann thinks dried strips of seaweed could replace leather, paper and plastic to make everyday objects like these laser-cut kelp lampshades (+ audio + slideshow).

Above: Julia Lohmann talks to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs about the project

Lohmann used a laser cutting machine to create patterns in pieces of kelp before sewing them together, or stretched them into shape while wet to dry into new forms.

Kelp hats and lampshades by Julia Lohmann

The malleable strips are also wrapped around rattan structures to create a variety of shapes. “The rattan acts like a skeleton and the seaweed is like a skin on top of it,” Lohmann told Dezeen.

Kelp hats and lampshades by Julia Lohmann

“Seaweed is an amazing material. We consume it almost every day – there are extracts of seaweed in toothpaste,” said Lohmann. “But we hardly ever see the material itself, and I think there is a value in it that has not been fulfilled yet.”

Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

Seaweed could be used as a substitute for leather, parchment and even some kinds of plastics, the designer argued. “I’ve made a veneer that works really well, so it could be a substitute for hardwood,” she said.

Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

Lohmann also hopes to promote the use of seaweed in fish farms to filter water and provide an additional income for struggling fishing communities. “I want to develop tools to make something from the material that is very valuable, and then I would love to share them with the communities, who then can combine them with their local craft techniques,” she explained.

Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

Next year Lohmann will launch the Department of Seaweed at the V&A museum in London as part of her half-year residency there, parodying the institution’s Department of Ceramics or Department of Silverware to explore the possibilities of the material.

Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

We previously featured a set of kelp objects by Lohmann presented in Milan in 2008.

Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

Dezeen also filmed an interview with Lohmann at Design Miami in which she introduces five images that represent her life in design.

Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

See all our stories about Julia Lohmann »
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Kelp lampshades by Julia Lohmann

Here’s some more information from the designer:


Julia Lohmann used her time at the Kunsthalle Project Space during Vienna Design Week 2012 to publicly work with kelp as a design material. She was joined by her partner, designer Gero Grundmann, and collaborated with local designer/milliner Moya Hoke and the master furriers Herbert and Christiane Weinberger to create stretched and laser-cut lamps, hats as well as structural test pieces to showcase the strength, flexibility and luminosity of kelp. Lohmann preserved the material to give it a supple, leather-like quality and also worked with pressed dry kelp, which she prepared for veneering and marquetry applications.

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by Julia Lohmann
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PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

Design students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld took an old inkjet printer apart and replaced its ink cartridge with felt pens to create an experimental printer, which they presented at Vienna Design Week.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

The project began when the designers, who all study at Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, took part in a creative printing workshop.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

“We were experimenting with usual inkjet printers and we modified them so that they printed with normal felt pens instead of an ink cartridge,” Hagen told Dezeen at Vienna Design Week. They used wood and glue to attach the felt pens where the cartridge would normally be.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

Above image is by Nick Albert/kollektiv fischka

“The tricky part of this project was to kind of pretend to the printer that it had a full cartridge, and also that it didn’t try to completely destroy the paper with too much pressure of the felt pen, or with the way the paper is sucked in,” explained Hagen.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

Above image is by Nick Albert/kollektiv fischka

“The fascinating thing was the mixture between the perfection of a machine and the reference to handwriting,” he said. “It was a really uncommon, new aesthetic that we were generating with this technique.”

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

Each printer ended up with an individual rhythm and style, but the pictures were printed in several layers to gain control over the process. ”[There was] always this kind of theme between failure and controlling, and not being able to control the technique,” Hagen added.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

We’ve previously featured a tiny printer that prints to-do lists and messages on a till roll and a fabric printer that uses bleach instead of ink.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

We’re publishing a selection of projects from Vienna Design Week, including a movie of designer Martí Guixé decorating a rug with drips of paintsee all our stories from Vienna.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

See all our stories about design »
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See all our stories from Vienna Design Week »

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

Images are by PenJet except where stated.

Here’s some more information from the designers:


The PenJet project is a collaboration of Rietveld Academie students Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld. The project originated from the workshop “Uncommon Usage” given by Jürg and Urs Lehni. During this workshop they experimented with the movement of printer heads. This resulted in a printer which could play a mini harp and another printer which showed the movement of the print head using an attached pen.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

In time they got more control over the movements so they could experiment with type, and an adapted typeface for the PenJet emerged. Also adapted pictures were “printed” in several layers.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

In general it commonly applies that the new (im)possibilities of every new technique influence the design process. This was also true for this new alternative use of a printer. Therefore it was decided to continue the project outside this workshop.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

Every brand of printer has its own manner of moving and characteristic rhythm. The PenJet shows the handwriting of the machine, some fine and straight, others messy and fluent. Also, the quality settings of the printer (presentation/normal/concept) influence the way the lines are drawn.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

The final result has both the imperfections of handwriting and the preciseness of a machine. Every page is unique. However, no matter much control there is, the printed result remains unpredictable. The PenJet prints random connection lines while there’s nothing to print. The represented texts refer all to transition within production processes.

PenJet printer by Jaan Evart, Julian Hagen and Daniël Maarleveld

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and Daniël Maarleveld
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Painted Rug by Martí Guixé for Nanimarquina

Spanish designer Martí Guixé squeezed bottles of paint over this white rug from Spanish brand Nanimarquina as part of an exhibition at Vienna Design Week (+ movie).

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

The movie shows Guixé dripping paint over the rug to create an irregular tiled pattern. The designer told Dezeen he was inspired by stories of traditional rug makers “painting by hand to create a more valuable rug” after they are woven.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

Painted Rug was shown as part of the Still Life With Light exhibition at Sotheby’s in Palais Wilczek.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

Earlier this year Nanimarquina celebrated its 25th anniversary by laying dozens of rugs across a square in Barcelona, and we published their movie of the event.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

Other projects by Martí Guixé we’ve featured include a series of containers with message labels attached and a clock that lets you write or draw where the numbers would be.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

See all our stories about Martí Guixé »
See all our stories about Nanimarquina »
See all our stories about rugs »

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

Here’s some more information from Nanimarquina:


Drip Painting is a form of abstract art in which the paint is poured or dripped onto a canvas. For Martí Guixé, the idea of painting a rug is not new; he’s been turning it over in his head for years, because he was familiar with the tradition found in some areas of Eastern Europe of colouring tapestries after they’ve been woven.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

In the Still Life With Light project at Sotheby’s Vienna, Martí Guixé and nanimarquina saw the opportunity to explore some of the possibilities of Drip Painting as graffiti and to apply it to a rug. This was how a rug was transformed into a canvas, another feature of the Canvas Furniture project.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

Painted Rug is a sketch of a rug that is in itself already a rug. Once again, nanimarquina has dared to invent new ways of reinventing the rug.

Painted Rug by Martí Guixé

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for Nanimarquina
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Vito Acconci interview: “Architecture is not about space but about time”

Vito Acconci

Architecture magazines are ruining architecture, Brooklyn-based artist and architect Vito Acconci told Dezeen at Vienna Design Week, stating that “architecture is the opposite of an image”.

Acconci believes the only difference between a piece of architecture and an image is that people can move through architecture, meaning the element of time is the crucial difference. “Architecture is not about space but about time,” he says.

Speaking to Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs in Vienna earlier this month, the 72-year-old described how he started out as a poet in the 1960s, becoming fascinated with the way the reader uses words to navigate across the page. Later he worked as a performance artist and now runs Acconci Studio, which focuses on landscape design and architecture.

Acconci explains how he now regrets his notorious 1971 “Seedbed” performance – which saw him lie hidden beneath a ramp in the Sonnabend Gallery in New York, verbally fantasising about, and masturbating over, gallery visitors passing over him – explaining that it “ruined my career”.

Below is a transcript of the conversation, which took place in Vienna during Vienna Design Week, where Acconci chaired the jury of the inaugural NWW Design Award along with Fairs and Italian designer Fabio Novembre, who also took part in the discussion.


Marcus Fairs: So, first of all Vito, tell us a little bit about yourself – give us the quick resume of your career.

Vito Acconci: I started as a writer, in the mid- to late- 60s. I was writing poetry. I wasn’t the only one who wanted things like this, but I wanted words to be closer to fact, I wanted words to almost try to be physical, you know? When you see words, you’re used to looking through words to subject matter. I hoped that the words could have some concrete specificity of their own. So you know, when I wrote, when I started a poem, I started by saying: how do I move? How do I move from left margin of the page to right margin? How do I move from one page, next page etc? After writing poetry ’til maybe towards the end of the 60s I started to think: why am I moving across the page? I should be moving across actual space, physical space.

So work changed context. No longer a poetry context, but an art context, because at that time art was being turned upside-down. It wasn’t necessarily painting and sculpture anymore, notions of performance were being talked about. And it had to do with the time, it was a time of very long songs in pop music. Neil Young, Van Morrison, not the traditional three-minute song, but seven-minute song, nine-minute song. And it was a time when – and I can’t say everybody was thinking about this – but people were thinking about “finding themselves”. How do you find yourself? So in a context like that, I thought: what else can I do but do work that had something to do with me, turning on myself, going through some enactment of what finding oneself can be? But that was maybe a starting point, and eventually it was about: how do I face you? How do I face you, the viewer?

But gradually time changed. “Self” wasn’t that important anymore. It was important at the end of the 60s, by ’72, ’73 it probably wasn’t an issue anymore. So a lot of us who were doing performances were starting to do something called “installations”. And art terms were never, almost never, formed by the people who did them, who did the so-called art. The words were given by curators, by critics. So the word “installations” was used, I mean art has used an amazing number of very vague words. “Installation” might be the vaguest.

Studio Acconci

Mur Island, Graz, 2003

Marcus Fairs: Tell us about what the studio does now, how do you place yourselves in terms of space-making, helping people move through space?

Vito Acconci: When the studio formed, at the end of the 80s, I thought: I wanted to form a studio of people because I wanted to do architecture, yet I thought: I can’t possibly do it alone, because I don’t really know architecture. Though stuff throughout the 80s was architecturally oriented.

But I thought it was important to form a studio of people who were a group of people, because I thought: I’m interested in public space. But I don’t know if public place should come from a single person, come from a private person. I thought the best way to get in notions of public place, is to have conversations. So the reason to form the studio was, I could work with people who knew more about architecture than I did, but everybody knows architecture, because there’s nobody who doesn’t walk through architecture. So architecture is the one thing that probably everybody knows, though probably people wouldn’t admit that because they don’t realise going through a building is starting to know architecture.

We built a very small percentage of our projects, possibly 10%. We’re asked to do a number of projects… but the projects we’re asked to do are probably more specifically so called ‘public art projects’ rather than “real architecture projects”. We try to turn them into architecture, which means every project we do has people using the space. What we don’t want at all, is a space that’s looked at from outside. It has to be a traversed space. We hope we can do some projects that turn the space a little bit upside-down. That turn the space a little bit inside out, so that, you know the hope is that if people go through spaces like this, they say: wow, you know? If we can go through a space like this, maybe we can change our own space. Do I know if anybody says that? Of course not. Ideally we want every space to move. Because I think now people are always subjected to their space, and until people can start to make some change in the space they’re in, only then, I think, can people start to be free with architecture. Can that ever happen? I don’t know.

Marcus Fairs: We were together yesterday, judging a design prize, and my personal perception was of a lot of the work we were seeing was that these young people, they’re living in an amazing time, and they’re not really being particularly adventurous creatively.

Vito Acconci: No, they’re not. They’re not because it’s a tough money time.

Marcus Fairs: To compare when you were growing up, when you were a student, when you were starting to practice the freedoms that you had, the kind of provocations that you were able to get away with, and…

Vito Acconci: I don’t think my generation thought of money that much. There were people who were making an amazing amount of money, there were a lot of painters in my generation, but I think a lot of my generation thought that because of the kind of work that we were doing, we were going to destroy the gallery system. We were totally naive. We made the gallery system probably stronger than ever, because galleries could say: look what we’re showing. You can’t buy this. But, we can take you into the back room and sell you a Jasper Johns, and sell you a Robert Rauschenberg. But you know again, ten or fifteen years before that, they were probably the decoys to get people in the galleries. Yeah, I think it’s a very different time, but I still think there are ways to do what maybe is more necessary to do.

Marcus Fairs: What’s happening, do you think, that is exciting? What’s happening in the creative sphere? And maybe it’s not architecture, maybe it’s not design. What out there excites you?

Vito Acconci: I think there’s some interesting architecture, it’s not necessarily built, I don’t know who are the interesting architects. I know the way we’re thinking is: I wish we could do architecture that wasn’t made of planes, that wasn’t made of surfaces. I wish we could do an architecture of pixels and particles, I wish we could do an architecture of thick air. We don’t know how to do that. But I think enough people are thinking somewhat along those lines, that if people keep on wanting to do something, maybe somebody does it.

Studio Acconci

Fence on the Loose, Toronto, 2012

Marcus Fairs: Do you think that there’s a radicalism, or a naivety that’s missing today. I mean I was reading about your “Seedbed” project. I mean things today that young designers or artists might see as provocative and radical don’t really come close to that, do they? Can you tell us a little bit about that project?

Vito Acconci: You know [laughs] I mean I wish I hadn’t, kind of wish I hadn’t done it. But it kind of ruined my career.

Marcus Fairs: Did it really?

Vito Acconci: Of course it did. I’m the person who did Seedbed, and I can never get past that. No one will ever take me seriously, as something like an architect, or designer, because of that. When probably very few people saw it at the time [laughs].

Marcus Fairs: But everybody’s probably heard about it. But you say you’ve ruined your career – is that a regret? Or would you be somewhere else right now if that hadn’t happened?

Vito Acconci: I don’t know! You know that was in 1972, I wish people would take more seriously what we do in 2012, or 2006, or you know. It labelled something, even though you know, I did performance for three years. I started doing performance in 69, the last performance I did was in 1973. I never thought of something I did as a final point, I always thought that this could lead to something else. I wanted to get excited by what we did, and not fall into something we had done before. Those pieces made sense at that ’69 to ’72 time, they don’t make sense any more.

Marcus Fairs: If it’s not too painful for you, just briefly tell us what Seedbed was all about.

Vito Acconci: It was at a gallery show. The room for Seedbed was a room about 20 feet wide, 45 feet long, halfway across the floor, the floor rises to become a ramp that goes up to a height of about two-and-a-half feet, three feet at the far wall. Let me give you some reasons for this though, because I know you want just the ridiculous shock value of it.

Marcus Fairs: [Laughs]

Vito Acconci: But I didn’t see it that way, and the reason I did it was that I hated the fact that everybody who knew a project of mine knew what I looked like, and I started to think: am I developing a personality cult? Or am I trying to do something else? I hoped I was doing something else. So therefore I wanted to find a way where I wouldn’t be seen from opening time at the gallery, to closing time. This all happens before and after people leave, I’m underneath the ramp. So I’m underneath the ramp for an eight hour gallery day. I’m underneath people walking, so I hear people’s footsteps.

I try to build sexual fantasies on those footsteps. People hear my voice saying things like: I’m doing this with the person on my left, I’m touching your hair, I’m running my hand down your back, etc etc etc. So every once in a while, or sometimes more, sometimes fewer times, I masturbate. People probably hear me. So the aim was to, can I make some connection with people above this floor?

I mean the masturbation was, I didn’t even think about the masturbation ’til a few days before the project. I knew that I wanted to be under there, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And you know, because of my background in words, I found out what I should do by means of words. I used Roget’s Thesaurus, that’s an important book to me, because it’s about analogues of words. It’s not about definitions, it’s very different than a dictionary, but you get almost an atmosphere of words. So I looked up the word ‘floor’, and came upon words like ‘undercurrent’, etcetera, came upon the word ‘seedbed’, and thought: well, now I guess I know what I have to do. But you know, it didn’t start as that, but it started as I want to do something that possibly implicates a viewer, but I had no idea, because all I could hear were footsteps.

Studio Acconci

Wave-A-Wall, New York, 2006

Marcus Fairs: Talk about some of the architecture you’ve done. The Island in the Mur project in Graz [in Austria] for example. So describe that project.

Vito Acconci: Yeah, it was done when Graz was the European Cultural Capital of the year, in 2003. And we were asked to do, to use the River Mur that runs through Graz, as a place for what the people in Graz called a ‘person-made island’. And they wanted this island to have three parts: a theatre, a cafe, and a playground. So when we started, we started playing around with ideas like, can we make an island of water? We didn’t quite know how to do that, so we started to focus on function. We said, let’s start with the theatre, a somewhat conventional shape for a theatre, is a bowl. What if we twist the bowl? Now the bowl is a dome. The bowl is a theatre, the dome becomes a bar and cafe, and a twisting space from one to the other becomes the children’s playground. Which I don’t know if I left this out, I think I said that Graz wanted us to do a dome?

I mean that’s the basic project and what we did, was, it gave us a chance to do an indoor space for the cafe, it gave us a chance to do a kind of playground that was a part of this shifting space from bowl to dome, and vice versa.

And sometimes I regret this, but it’s probably the project that’s closest to architecture. The people who work with me have gone to architecture school, they all want to think we’re doing architecture. We’re doing something like architecture, but usually architecture doesn’t have a million dollar budget, it has bigger budgets than that. Though the Graz project was at that time six million euros, which at the time was probably nine million dollars. Certainly the most expensive… and not that I wanted, that I want to think that every project we do needs a lot of money to do it, but the problem is if it doesn’t, if you want something to be used by people, if you can’t spend money on it, it’ll probably be gone in three weeks.

Marcus Fairs: So poetry, to art, to performance or installations, architecture, public space. Do you see the studio could shift still further?

Vito Acconci: Probably, into vehicles, maybe? I think future architecture is inevitably mobile.

Fabio Novembre: What do you think about Anish Kapoor as an architect?

Vito Acconci: Anish Kapoor as an architect?

Fabio Novembre: ‘Cause he’s turning more as an architect than as an artist, right?

Vito Acconci: Lately, yeah…

Fabio Novembre: He’s experimenting with the space in a very interesting way, right?

Vito Acconci: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that that Chicago space is pretty good. His London Olympics project…

Marcus Fairs: Oh my God, people hated that.

Vito Acconci: They hated it?

Marcus Fairs: They hated the aesthetic experience of looking at the tower. I mean, it’s the least popular landmark in London.

Vito Acconci: Yeah, yeah I kind of came upon reports of that. I mean could they use it? [laughs]

Marcus Fairs: Yeah, yeah, you can travel up. You travel up to the top.

Vito Acconci: And does anything happen when you get up to the top?

Marcus Fairs: You look out the window.

Vito Acconci: You go down [laughs]. You go up in order to go down.

Fabio Novembre: What is your personal opinion on the sensibility of the space that Anish Kapoor is developing?

Vito Acconci: It’s a little too grand for me. Not all the time, I think, but like that piece, that project particularly – but again, I wasn’t there. I only could see it from photographs, it didn’t seem like it made any possible change in people, they’re just walking, and then they’re walking down, so…

Fabio Novembre: What about Richard Serra? Cause Richard Serra basically is an architect. He cuts space, you know?

Vito Acconci: But he hates architecture.

Fabio Novembre: Yeah but he’s doing architecture!

Vito Acconci: He doesn’t think he does, but you know, I once probably made a big mistake, and I think it was in Frieze magazine, I don’t remember now, when the interviewer asked me about Richard Serra, and I said: I’d like it so much more if when you got inside a Torqued Ellipse, there would be a hot dog stand inside. So that there’d be something for you to do [laughs]. If Richard Serra read that, he’d probably, he’s probably out to get me [laughs] you know? Because he sees it as: no, you have to have no use but the appreciation of, you know. And of course, he can think that, but I don’t know if space is as important as time, because yes, architecture may take up space, but it takes time to go through. To me, what taught me about architecture was a movie I saw at the age of 21 years old…

Fabio Novembre: Which was?

Vito Acconci: Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Renais’ “Last Year at Marienbad”, which to me, it somehow foresaw, I didn’t foresee it, but it somehow foresaw everything I was going to do. But I didn’t know it yet. ‘Cause I started to do a lot of things with sound, but this was much, much, much later. When I did installations, they all had sound, but you know, that was 1976, 1977. The movie has a narrator’s voice, but particularly, the movie begins with a camera going down the corridor of what the narrator is calling this ‘Baroque Hotel’, and I think, without – I don’t think I realised it when I saw it, but I realised: architecture can’t be looked at from the outside; architecture is going through a space. Architecture is not about space but about time. And unless you travel through it, it could be a picture in an architecture magazine. And of course, most of my information about architecture comes from architecture magazines, but it kind of ruins architecture [laughs] It makes architecture an image. Architecture is the opposite of an image.

Marcus Fairs: I think that’s really interesting: one of the things that internet publishing can do, is you can introduce the dimension of time, through movies, and stuff like that. But it’s astonishing how reluctant architects have been to allow the public to experience their buildings on a time basis, they’re still using a hundred-year-old technology to represent buildings.

Vito Acconci: Yes, yeah, yeah. I think unfortunately a lot of architects, I think, have a kind of ‘master builder’ complex [laughs] And they don’t want people to change the space. I mean I’ve been with architect friends, who are taking me to a new building, a new house in San Francisco, and as we went in, he says ‘Ah, I wish I had taken you here before they put the furniture in!’ [laughs].

Marcus Fairs: Before they put the people in as well.

Vito Acconci: Yeah, yeah. I mean…yes and sure, I mean sometimes I’ve felt people do things that you might not want them to do, yet at the same time, I think you have to leave it to people after a while. You have your chance for a while, and then maybe the people will move out, and you can renovate it later [laughs]. I love the idea of “peopled space”. I mean that’s what makes architecture. It’s gotta be at the behest of people. I think people should be able to say: why can’t we change this wall? Why can’t we make this wall moveable?

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about space but about time”
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Mobile kitchen wins the first NWW Design Award

News: a mobile kitchen designed by Anna Rosinke and Maciej Chmara has won the top prize at the inaugural NWW Design Awards at Vienna Design Week.

NWW Design Award

The designers created the cooking cart and collapsible table to tour Austria and make friends with locals in the streets by sharing food with them. Read more about the project in our earlier story.

NWW Design Award

Second prize went to a chair called Donald by Philipp Hermes and Dustin Jessen, which is formed in two parts that slot together and join with Velcro-like pads.

NWW Design Award

In third place was the Stoolbench system by Johanna Dehio, comprising stools that can be joined by a plank of wood with holes in the top to make a bench, and small round tables that can be joined with a larger plank to make a long dining table.

NWW Design Award

The winners received €5000 and a trophy created by Austrian designer Thomas Feichtner. The three winning designs will be prototyped and exhibited in a travelling exhibition.

NWW Design Award

Nearly 300 projects were submitted to the judging panel, which was led by artist Vito Acconci and included Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs.

NWW Design Award

The NWW Design Award was founded by Viennese family-run furniture company Neue Wiener Werkstätte and will be held every two years from now on.

NWW Design Award

See our photos of people we bumped into at Vienna Design Week on our Facebook page.

NWW Design Award

Here’s some more information from the organisers:


This was the first NWW DESIGN AWARD: The winners have been declared!

Last Friday, the NWW DESIGN AWARD for innovative interior design was presented for the first time. During the Vienna Design Week, the initiator, Stefan Polzhofer, and the chairman of the jury, Vito Acconci, publicly presented the three winning designs in the magnificent rooms of the Kursalon Vienna. The presentation of the NWW Design Award 2012 shortlist offered an exciting insight into the ideas workshops of the young designer scene. The award ceremony was moderated by the Head of the ORF-TV Culture Section, Martin Traxl. The success of the new initiative was celebrated with 450 guests until the early hours of the next day at the After-Award Party.

Reflecting current trends and supporting new products: The NWW DESIGN AWARD was established by Neue Wiener Werkstätte with the intention of initiating an exchange of ideas and knowledge between creative minds, institutional partners and companies, and with the aim of defining new standards and trends for exclusive furniture design and to bring them to the attention of the general public. As pointed out by Stefan Polzhofer, the managing director who guided KAPO Moebelwerkstaetten GmbH and the brand Neue Wiener Werkstaette into the 21st century, the NWW DESIGN AWARD is directed equally towards young designers and students of design as to established interior architects and designers. The documentation of all submitted works will be developed into a Design Think Tank Archive.

The theme of 2012 was: Meta Mobility – our life as modern nomads

297 projects that were submitted from over 20 different countries presented the jury of experts, headed by star designer Vito Acconci, with a difficult task. The three winning designs were selected from a shortlist of the 17 best projects and their creators received the coveted NWW Design Award Trophy (designed by the national award winning designer Thomas Feichtner) during the award ceremony in the Kursalon Vienna last Friday.

Prior to the award ceremony, Heik Afheldt, renowned futurologist, journalist and economic advisor, reviewed, in his keynote speech, the motivic area of the cultural history of mobility, the many aspects of which had to be made clearly visible by the participants of the competition by means of sketches and renderings of the furnishings of modern hyper-nomads.

THE WINNERS 2012

1st Prize: MOBILE HOSPITALITY by Maciej Chmara & Anna Rosinke/AUT

The designer Maciej Chmara was born in Gdynia, Poland, in 1984. He studied in Gdansk, Linz and Vienna; together with Ania Rosinke, he stands for chmara.rosinke (Vienna). The predominantly sociocultural motivated projects of the studio are classed between architecture, design and art and stand out by their simplicity, ecological awareness and a poetic language of form that reduces objects to their archetype. The project MOBILE HOSPITALITY topicalises personal initiative in the urban area. Kitchen furniture as a happening: With this easy to transport kitchen with the surface area of a euro-pallet, you have everything you need with you: crockery, cooking utensils for up to 12 people, fresh herbs, three gas cookers, a foot pump for waste water. The startling colours of DIY superstores contrast with solid wood manufactured in outstanding quality. To be enjoyed outdoors, in a holiday cottage, a loft or wherever city nomads want to stop for a while.

2nd Prize: DONALD by Philipp Hermes & Dustin Jessen/D

The designers Dustin Jessen and Philipp Hermesmet met at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen in 2006 where they studied industrial design and began developing projects together. In 2010, they founded Hermes/Jessen Industrial Design. The project DONALD is a chair of moulded wood that was created in connection with their bachelor thesis and in co-operation with the producer of moulded wood, Becker Brakel. The shape is the result of an iterative, comprehensive design process where the human being was the central focus and technical feasibility greatly influenced its form. The chair can be produced entirely in Brakel. The wood comes from beech trees from the surrounding woods which are sustainably managed.

3rd Prize: STOOLBENCH by Johanna Dehio/D

The designer Johanna Dehio was born in Munich in 1984. She studied product design at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam and at the UDK Berlin. The ‘Berliner by choice’ is co-founder of the exhibition series Transalpino and has organised and curated exhibitions for the Furniture Fair in Milan and the Designmai/DMY in Berlin. The project STOOLBENCH was inspired by spontaneous solutions and improvisations of temporary seating. It consists of several stools that are complemented by rounded recesses to form a bench, and small, round tables that can be formed into a long dinner table. All elements are veneered with different types of wood and offer an aesthetic overall view even when the individual parts rest unused against a wall.

The designer of this winning design can look forward to a prize money of EUR 5,000. The Neue Wiener Werkstaette will produce prototyps of all three prize-winning designs and put them on show in a travelling exhibition; they will be shown at the Milan Fair, Cologne Fair, designforum Styria, NWW showroom in Vienna and other international venues. In addition to the organiser of the award, the Neue Wiener Werkstätte, various national and international design partners, universities and companies support this new award which, in the future, will be held with changing themes every two years.

The Neue Wiener Werkstätte is a brand of KAPO Möbelwerkstätten GmbH. The family-owned company, managed by Stefan Polzhofer,
uses the brand to further devleop the achievements of the historic Wiener Werkstätte. It stands for a characteristic combination of tradition, craftsmanship and design. The original carpentry shop was founded by Karl Polzhofer I. in 1927, in East Styrian Pöllau. Four generations have worked to transform the former workshop with two workers into an internationally successful company with over 250 employees and a turnover of approx. €25m.

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NWW Design Award
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